Siach Hasadeh - New Interpretations of Old Melodies

*** New, for a limited time!  Hear outtakes from the session here! ***

** Hear some of our other music here, here, and here! **

Welcome! 

Hi, my name is Yoni Kaston, and I am part of a duo and musical collective, Siach Hasadeh along with double bassist, Joel Kerr.  We are very excited to be producing our second full length album, with some very special guests and beautiful tunes, some well known, some far less so.  I'm very happy you've dropped in here for a visit, and I hope you will consider a contribution to, or preorder of this project.

Who Are We?

The core of Siach HaSadeh is myself on clarinet (and occasionally banjo), and Joel Kerr on double bass.  I had been collecting and transcribing old chassidic songs for a number of years, and from a variety of sources, including taxi rides shared with strangers in the Ukraine, good friends, and a book of songs transcribed by a distant relative after the War, of songs he remembered from his childhood in Staszow, Poland.  We have been playing and exploring these pieces together since 2009 and have been developing our interpretive language, which is improvisatorial and minimalist, respectful of the intention of the music, while drawing on our diverse backgrounds.

Over these years we have had the pleasure to work with great guest musicians in our concerts and recordings, and over time another iteration of Siach Hasadeh has formed as a quartet incorporating Daniel Fuchs on violin and Gael Huard on cello.  With this formation we have been able to further develop our improvisational language and collaborative arrangement style.

This year, three great things happened to us, we were awarded a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to record our second album (our first on-purpose one!), we had a very interesting workshop with Marcelo Moguilevsky which opened up new creative horizons, and some very special extra guests agreed to take part in the project, amazing harmonicist Jason Rosenblatt and master oudist Ismail Fencioglu.

Why IndieGogo?

Although we did get some support from the Canada Council for the Arts for this project, it is not quite enough to cover the costs to complete the project.  

The basic breakdown of our large costs, before paying the guests, distribution and other this and that costs are approximately as follows:

Recording studio: $1,500

Sound engineer and equipment rental: $2,000

Mixing and mastering: $500

Photography, design, editing: $600

Manufacturing: $1,400

which means that in order to cover costs and pay everyone fairly we need to raise/presell about $1,400 to complete the project.

I don't expect to make any money on this despite the hundreds of hours of work I've put in, but I want to make sure all the musicians and other artists are fairly compensated and that the production is the best we can possibly make it.  If we by miracle do raise a bit more than the goal it will only enhance what we are able to do with the production, and if somehow we go beyond that point, any further funds raised by preselling the album will all go into a segregated account and used only for the production of our NEXT NEXT album, for which I already have some great ideas!

Having pre-sales will also help us determine the quantity to print, the quality of packaging etc.  

But far more importantly than all the above, is that I want you to hear the album!  I hope that this campaign will spread beyond our circles of acquaintance, and that maybe someone will discover this music.  I am very passionate about these songs, it is music very close to my heart and I hope to get it out as far as possible!

What You Get

In my opinion the most important thing you get for your contribution, and the reason that many of us have contributed to such campaigns in the past, is the simple fact of supporting the arts and creation.  Your five, ten, twenty, fifty dollars can make possible the creation of art that is not necessarily commercially supportable but that has intrinsic value.  That's a big warm fuzzy, I know it well.   Think about it, for the price of a coffee and a muffin, you get to be the Prince Esterhazy to our Joseph Haydn, the Frederick the Great to our J.S. Bach.  How cool is that?

But that's maybe not enough for you, and it's not enough for me either.  That's why, if you take a look at the perks on the right, you'll see that your contribution, for all the warm fuzzies of being a donation that enables creation, also gets you either digital or physical copy of the new album and/or the old one, and some other things you might find interesting.....

Why does it Matter?

Siach Hasadeh as a duo and as a collective, and as my personal project, serves a number of goals:

• To collect, preserve and disseminate valuable and beautiful music from the various Jewish traditions, particularly pre-War Chassidic traditions, some of which is not well known outside of Chassidic circles, and not necessarily recorded or documented within them.  
• To explore this repertoire through personal expression, improvisation, and collaborative arrangement, with a reverence for the spiritual intent of the music and its form as a primarily vocal tradition.
• To create music that is unique and adheres to our highest artistic values.
• To engage in a communicative and living, and constantly evolving art.

Other Ways You Can Help

I'm turning to you folks for an investment in helping bring this project to fruition; however, there are always other ways that you can help:

PLEASE spread the word about this campaign to your friends, family, musical acquaintances, and anybody that might be interested in contributing or even just in knowing about it... share on Facebook, and whatever other things people share stuff on.  Even a small contribution from enough people will be enough to make this all work!

Apparently, if you log in and then share the link to this page, and then someone clicks on your link and then contributes, I can see that that person contributed through your help, and I will increase your perk level by any amount contributed as a result of your efforts.