- The Forward

Many musicians can trace their choice of career to an act of teenage
rebellion. But Eric Stern may be one of the few whose youthful bad-
boy urges led him to opera — though, to be fair, his Vagabond Opera
ensemble is not your standard opera company. Nor is Stern your
standard opera singer.

Stern’s parents ran an anarcho-syndicalist bookshop and record store
in Philadelphia. And while music of various kinds could be heard
around the Stern household, Verdi and Puccini were not among them.
“For me, rebelling meant studying opera,” Stern told the Forward in
an interview from his home in Portland, Ore. A stint in the chorus of
the Delaware Valley Opera Company led to private voice lessons,
though Stern briefly decamped to Paris to pursue a career as a
writer. “I thought that’s where writers went,” he said.

In the end, Stern returned to the United States and began to win
minor operatic roles. He also began to explore his Jewish heritage
with the help of Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, a fellow Pennsylvania native
and one of the first female rabbis ordained in America. Those
spiritual investigations prompted Stern to look for Jewish
connections in music, as well, and ultimately led him to klezmer.
Stern’s grandmother had performed in the Yiddish theater, and he had
heard some Jewish music as a child; but he now began eagerly soaking
up large quantities of the stuff, delving into recordings by everyone
from traditionalists like the Klezmer Conservatory Band to
experimentalists like John Zorn.

Stern’s curiosity, and his scholarly bent — his conversation is
peppered with references to Aristotle and the Talmud — soon led him
to explore related forms of music from Eastern Europe and the Middle
East. (He’s currently studying Balkan accordion.) Throughout, Stern
has been guided by what he describes as a Talmudic approach to music:
“You immerse yourself in text and in teachings,” he said. For Stern,
that means both understanding the words he sings and learning as much
as possible about the history and culture behind the music. His
interest in Arab percussion, for example, led to several semesters’
worth of Arabic at Portland State University.

The Vagabond Opera might best be seen as the culmination of all this
intellectual and musical restlessness, or as a holding company for
all of Stern’s distantly related interests — or, better yet, as an
ensemble of like-minded musicians who are willing to tackle anything
that Stern can throw at them. The group’s first, eponymous recording
gives a pretty good indication of just what that can involve: The
program covers Aaron Lebedeff’s Yiddish classic, “Romania, Romania”;
traditional Ukrainian, Macedonian and Middle Eastern material; bits
and pieces of various operas, and several Stern originals before
coming to a close on “Otchi Chornyia.”

There’s a strong undercurrent of louche, fin-de-siècle cabaret to the
Vagabond Opera’s work, one that is fed by the ensemble’s lurching
rhythms and madcap energy, and underscored by Stern’s deranged-
ringmaster persona. To hear Robin Jackson, their Sax player intone
the introduction to “Ravella” (“Friends, have you ever had it all?
The glittering gold, the fortune, the girl? And then it was gone, in
one spin of the wheel, one drop of the cards, and one wink of an eye?
… Yes! I mean no! I mean yes! I mean no! But… why don’t you tell us
all about it in song form, using riverboat imagery and perhaps a
monkey or two?”) in the sterntorian tones of a carnival barker is to
hear a man whose love of the absurd is matched only by his complete
lack of inhibition. (The group’s proclivity for bowlers, straw hats
and suspenders only heightens the carnival/cabaret effect, as does
its occasional use of a belly dancer.) “I would hope that we’re
theater in the Attic sense,” Stern said. “At its best, I want it to
blend all of Aristotle’s elements of musicality, theatricality and
all the rest.”

And yet there remains a Jewish substratum to all of this which
emerges not only in Stern’s choice of repertoire (“Romania, Romania”;
Alexander Olshanetsky’s “Ich Hob Dikh Tsu Ful Lib”), but also in his
desire to create a sense of ritual space with each performance. Stern
credits Rabbi Marcia Praeger of Philadelphia with having explained to
him the narrative structure of the Sabbath service, and says that he
models the Opera’s performances along similar lines, pacing the
ensemble and leading audiences “without pandering.” It’s an
interesting analogy, but it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch once
you’ve actually heard the group; antics aside, they cast a powerful
spell.

Alexander Gelfand - view publication’s website

- SF Bay Guardian

Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, there run two rivers, one of
vodka and one of absinthe. Not found on any maps, they are known only
to five men and one woman. The name of these musicians? Vagabond
Opera. Fusing klezmer with sounds of the Balkans and the Rom, along
with a peppering of belly dance, opera, and tango, these neo-cabaret
fire starters roll out a rabble-rousing vision of globalization,
1920s-style.

Todd Lavoie - view publication’s website

- MetroActive Silicon Valley

Where are we anyway? The Vagabond Opera, which can be viewed as
either a band or an experience, is based out of the Pacific
Northwest. But their music functions as an axis mundi for the rich
and sensual Gypsy sounds of eastern and western Europe, swing, belly
dance, tangos and klezmer, all tied up in a package of a European-
style cabaret. In other words, these guys have accordions and really
cool hats. Their strings are haunted, their vocals weave in and out
of English, Arabic and Balkan, and their transgenre style makes them
eligible to play gigs as varied as jazz clubs, state fairs and folk
festival

Laura Mattingly -

- The Willamette Week; Portland, OR

Vagrant Valentine Vagabond Opera, or How to Make Love in Eight Languages.

Eric Stern looks like an exiled revolutionary. Black-bearded, he caps his shaved head with a high, fuzzy black hat. He could be in a Parisian dive in 1888, 1908 or 1928, hunched over a notebook, one eye on the Ruthenian nationalist at the corner table.

He could be plotting the ventilation of an Archduke, diagramming a vitriol attack on the visiting czar’s cortege. He favors declarative, manifestolike statements:

“I consider myself a Jewish composer.”

“I come from an Absurdist theater tradition.”

“Public space should be a place of art.”

Given such trappings, the facts do not surprise. His parents ran an anarchist book and record shop in Philadelphia. His grandmother danced in the Yiddish theater. He trained as an opera singer before rejecting classical elitism. He once did run off to Paris. After a five-month road trip landed him in Portland, he earned rent gelt playing accordion and singing on street corners.

Here, Stern fell in with some like-minded souls, and presto: Vagabond Opera, his band, now a six-piece of alienated classicists and romantic bohemians. Gypsy music, opera, klezmer and cabaret come-ons mingle like emigrés trading aliases at an after-hours club. It’s highly cultured, with a guttersnipe’s knowing sneer.

“Back at the turn of the century, poor Italian immigrants flocked to the opera,” says Stern. “The classical tradition is totally valid, I think, but not when it becomes a class thing. One reason the band is called Vagabond Opera is that we’re trying to create an operatic atmosphere that’s for everyone.”

On the night of Saint Valentine, Vagabond Opera stages a cabaret, encouraging costumes and audience participation. Stern plans to flex his tenor in Spanish, English, German, Yiddish, Arabic, Turkish, Russian and a nonsense language. The spirit of counter-cultural cosmopolitanism prevails, as the evening’s timely theme is “Make Love, Not War.”

“I’d say I’m on the fringes of the peace movement,” Stern says. “Too often, people are flagellating themselves. We need a sense of humor, fun and community.”

See? He may look like Trotsky’s nephew, but Eric Stern means nothing but well.

Zach Dundas - view publication’s website

“The 2003 CD Release” - Portland Mercury

To celebrate the release of their new CD, Vagabond Opera, Portland’s premiere band of Klezmer, orchestral hooligans, are having a party. That’s not exactly novel, but the boogie-ing, circus-like, gypsy jazz of their new material sure is. If it’s been any amount of time since you waltzed with buckles in your shoes, this is your opportunity to rectify. Heavy on accordions, horns, and opera voices, they could charm snakes. At times they sound like part of the soundtrack to Fiddler on the Roof, which by the way is an under-appreciated cinematic masterpiece. They also include a cover of “Port of Amsterdam,” a classic that was also performed by the grossly under-appreciated UK acoustic duo the Singing Loins. Expand your cultural capital!

Marjorie Skinner - view publication’s website

- The Oregonian; Portland, OR

Last night, I was in Paris, sipping absinthe and typing away furiously on an old Blickensderfer typewriter, as rain beat against my garret apartment.

Actually, in truth, I was sitting in the gymnasium of McMenamins Kennedy School, sipping water and listening to a band called Vagabond Opera play beneath an old basketball hoop while 4-year-olds danced about in stocking feet. But for those three hours, it was easy to imagine myself living out a bohemian fantasy.

What else could you expect from a band composed of classically trained musicians, ethnomusicologists and the offspring of anarchists, who toss around words such as “absurdist” and sing songs that evoke images of “thieves, Jewish weddings (and) Parisian tramps.”

“What kind of music is this?” a girl asked her father, as the show was about to start.

“Well, it’s sort of klezmer,” he said, searching.

“What’s that?” the girl asked. “Gypsy music?”

“No,” the man said, “But they do some of that, too. It’s hard to describe what they sound like, actually.”

And it truly is. As singer, accordion player and the band’s founder, Eric Stern stepped up to the microphone and the music began, you could hear whispers of not only klezmer and Gypsy tunes, but also opera, cabaret, early jazz, sexy tangos, drunken Irish dirges, Balkan songs and the undulating swells of Arabic belly dance music.

“We get so hung up on categories,” Stern had said, the day before the show. “We live in an age when we can cross genres.”

And apparently, travel back in time, too.

As the band played that night, dressed in bowlers and top hats, and, in the case of the cellist, combat boots, I found myself imaging gas lamps and rain-slick cobblestone streets, tuberculosis and fur coats, basement taverns and underground newspapers, phonographs and hooch, haystacks and shtetls.

On the band’s Web site, Stern — who grew up in Philadelphia (where his parents owned an anarchist book store and record shop), studied opera and ran away to Paris for a time to try to make it as an artist and a writer, and when he first came to Portland, lived out of his Oldsmobile and played accordion on the streets to earn money for first month’s rent — has written that the band is “driven by a desire to rediscover, reinterpret and refresh many vigorous forms of musical expression that have fallen by our cultural wayside.”

In person he puts it another way: “I am so sick of guitars.” (”Oh, boy,” he says and smiles as he watches me write this down, because he knows that it will probably go off like a bomb for some, but then, with his shaved head and commanding voice, he’s not the shy and retiring type. )

Vagabond Opera’s show on this particular night was packed, standing room only: Older, graying couples, families, cool kids with blue hair, bald heads and avant-garde glasses.

“Feel free to sit there and just enjoy the music,” Stern told them all. “But you can also come up and dance. Don’t be afraid to be the first one.”

The first to comply, curiously enough, were the farthest away from the Old World past this music evokes: the audiences’ children, of whom there were a dozen, at least. They flocked to the front, as though hypnotized. “That man,” saxophonist Robin Jackson told me between sets, nodding his top-hatted head toward Stern, “He’s a pied piper.”

Soon it was a preschool mosh pit, with children spinning and leaping and kicking up their heels and screaming in crazed abandon. Stern and Jackson got on their knees to serenade them with saxophone and accordion, and the children engulfed them, and I worried for a minute they might carry the two off in a frenzy, like an army of ants. But the children behaved themselves.

Gradually, adults followed, also transfixed. But the children clearly understood how to channel this music better. Maybe it’s because they are better at imagining things than adults, living in other worlds, but there were moments when I looked up and they did not look young anymore, but older than anyone here.

And then the belly dancer arrived, in a rustle of silk and the tinkling of her gold coin belt. And everyone watched in wonder as Yo Shina threw her hips to the beat. By 9:30 the children had taken their exhausted parents home to bed, and the mood changed.

Now, the candles were burning low. A man and woman took the floor and stared into each other’s eyes. He whirled her around, pressing his hips hard against hers.

If ever you have wondered whether it was possible to freak dance to an accordion, I can say now with great authority, that yes, it is possible. At least, if you are listening to Vagabond Opera.

Then, two women with feathers woven through their hair and fantastically embroidered clothing, took the floor and swayed sultrily, following their own internal rhythm.

At one point during the night, Stern had sung, “I wish I was Marlene Dietrich.”

Oh, but you are, I wanted to say.

Tonight, we are whatever we want to be. Young old children. Accordion lovers. Belly dancers. Bohemian writers.

At least until the music stops.

And then I am just a woman in a dirty Civic, driving home in the dark, far, far from Paris.

Inara Verzemnieks - view publication’s website

-Music Liberation Project

Somewhere in the world, on some cobblestone strasse, a wedding is taking place, wine is being liberally served, perhaps some baklava or matzah balls are sitting lonely on a ravaged buffet table and the entire party is dancing to a band they wish was The Vagabond Opera. They are perhaps the most fun band I’ve heard since the Squirrel Nut Zippers. While The Zippers main focus was updating 1920’s swing, The Opera spends its time reviving old world folk songs.

Akin to those they named themselves after, the vagabonds, it’s clear they find the most joy in the music they make. There is, even in the most haunting and moody songs, a sense of mirth and elation, as though there is nothing better in the world than playing…Stern’s ode to Portland, Freemont Street Stomp, to the body jerking, 7/8 time, Reine De Le Rocca, to the spooky and dizzying, Scary Tale Theater, these are the biggest treats on Get On The Train. Eric has a great sense of humor that comes through not only in his lyrics but also in his compositions.

sh - view publication’s website

- The Eugene Weekly; Eugene, OR

From the far-flung exotic reaches of Portland, Vagabond Opera brings a musical goulash of styles wherever they pitch their tents for the night. Specializing in Bohemian eclecticism, the troupe borrows liberally from musical styles all over the world and runs it through their own special filter: part demented klezmer band, part Kurt Weill cabaret decadence.

Their repertoire ranges from gut-bucket swing, Arabic belly dance and tangos to Ukrainian folk-punk ballads, St. Louis Jjazz and rags and a special tip of the fedora to Marlene Dietrich.

Led by Eric Stern, an operatic tenor, accordionist, pianist and composer, the band is rounded out by Robin Jackson on tenor saxophone, Jason Flores on upright bass, cellist Skip VonKuske, percussionist Mark Burdon and Leslie Kernochan, an operatic soprano and alto saxophone player.

A frequent performer throughout the Northwest, Vagabond Opera opened for Air America’s Al Franken in his recent trip to Portland and has appeared with the Oregon Symphony. They’ve also performed at the Oregon Country Fair, the Willamette Valley Folk Festival and headlined on Oregon Public Radio’s Live Wire Broadcast.

John Ginn - view publication’s website

The North Coast Journal

The e-mail from Vagabond Opera was intriguing, offering “passionate Bohemian vaudvillany, gut-bucket swing, Paris hot jazz, Arabic bellydance, tangos, Ukrainian folk-punk ballads, klezmer and vigorous originals mingling with Absurdist, Neo-Classical and European Cabaret style…” It sounded wild. I asked them to send a CD, which had an equally wild, wide-ranging feel.

My conversation with Vagabond Opera founder/accordionist Eric Stern was also wild and wide-ranging. I began with a simple request — “tell me about the genesis of the band” — and with occasional breaks to soothe his three-month-old son, Jascha, Eric launched into his life story. It began in Philadelphia, where he grew up in a bookstore run by his anarcho-syndicalist parents and which had a record collection that included music from all over the world. Despite the leftist leanings of his folks, he became interested in opera, and pursued operatic training even though he realized that it tended toward elitism. “At first opera was a beautiful, wide-open, wonderful world, but it became narrower and narrower. And my peers weren’t going to opera I also had a broadening appreciation of my own Jewish and Eastern European heritage, and I realized that there was much more of a mix to be obtained.”

And thus horizons, and his musical palate expanded. He explained that his bandmates share his broad interests and include ethno-musicologists and jazz players. But, I wondered, where did the accordion come in? That launched another long tale, one that involved a trip west, when he “tuned in, turned on and dropped out,” took a mind-expanding visit to a Rainbow Gathering and made the acquaintance of a woman in Portland, Sylvia. “I met her in her garden and fell head over heels,” he noted. Unfortunately, she eventually dumped him. He could not get her off his mind, at least not until the day he saw an accordion in a Philly pawn shop window and went inside and played it for an hour of more. “I realized I hadn’t thought of Sylvia the entire time,” he recalled.

He would eventually busk his way back across country to Oregon, assemble some like-minded musicians in Portland’s wide-open scene and begin his experiment in re-thinking the idea of opera. The rest is history.

Bob Doran - view publication’s website

-WNWR, AM 1540; Philadelphia, PA>

Everything about them is first-class: the music, the band, the voices, the arrangements, the technical quality, the CD artwork and design. Listening to Vagabond Opera is like taking a trip back in time and into the future at the very same time, and that ain’t easy!

Barry Reisman - WNWR, AM 1540 Philadelphia view publication’s website

-The St John’s Sentinel; Portland, OR.

You catch them out of the corner of your eye: a firetruck whizzing by, the bed filled with mismatched band uniforms and spangly cabaret clowns honking their sousaphone in your general direction. Or maybe you walk past an open door and hear on the summer breeze the wail of an accordion, accompanied by a sweeping operatic tenor, wafting over the head of a dancing crowd. Who are they?

They are the bands embodying the latest evolution in the Portland music scene: the Pohemian fusion of turn-of-the-century musical traditions and carnivalesque performances.

Since the 1970s, every generation has gone through a retro trend, as we see leg warmers reappearing on self-respecting adults, but this music is different. Rather than the usual 20-year nostalgia - the ’70s in the ’90s, the ’80s in 2006 - this trend reaches back much farther.

The music and style of Pohemia is influenced by the late 1800s to 1930s. All of the bands choose their own homage to the era; it may be their style of dress or their music. Music then was part of a community, whether it was people with homemade instruments on their porch or gathering to see a traveling show.

In the age where the recording contract is king and big-name bands go on the road only when they have a new album to push, the music of Pohemia places emphasis on the show. It doesn’t matter if the show is in a club or just free music on the street. The aesthetic, the dancers, the quality of sound are all best experienced live, and they track their success in the quality of their audience, rather than the number of iTunes downloads.

The new movement pays homage to that spirit in unique ways. At the heart of the Pohemian music movement are such bands as the March Fourth Marching Band and the Vagabond Opera, as well as country-flavored groups like the Stolen Sweets, Sassparilla Jug Band, the Dickel Brothers and others.

The Aesthetic

When March Fourth takes to the streets, their look is as much a part of the show as their music. The mismatched band costumes decorated with spangles, flowers, stripes and punk-rock twists are a far cry from the traditional stodgy marching-band attire.

As the dancers and stilt walkers move about the crowd, enticing people who were bobbing their heads to let loose and dance, the face paint and the costumes act as a bridge. People see them and smile, and you get the feeling the real world has faded just for a minute and it’s acceptable to do something silly.

“I thought I was dressed up because I had some glitter on my face,” said Eric Stern, the bandleader for Vagabond Opera, after playing with March Fourth with the first time. “They really raised the bar.”

Stern has left the glitter behind and, as part of his ringmaster mystique, sports an impressive handlebar mustache, waxed to perfect points.

“I got into the circus-art-vaudeville communit and it was fun to bring it into the band,” said Robin Jackson, Vagabond’s saxophonist and vocalist.

Unlike the Stolen Sweets, who play ’20s and ’30s Boswell Sisters tunes, or Sassparilla Jug Band, who play dust-bowl folk, March Fourth and Vagabond Opera’s music doesn’t specifically evoke the era, but the circus vibe certainly does. Solely by listening to a CD you miss part of what makes them unique and so much fun.

The Sound

Vagabond Opera’s bassist, Jason Flores, stresses the band, and most Pohemian music for that part, has an “emphasis on musicianship,” and it’s important that they “challenge [them]selves.” In the age of digital production where one person and a computer can simulate a symphony, the music of Pohemia stresses mastery of traditional instruments.

For Pete Krebs of Stolen Sweets, the music and the look conjure up a time “when things were well-made, rather than stretched out and bleached by mass production.”

The Depression in many ways defined the music of this era, and music was a thing of joy at a time in the nation when people were feeling things were out of control.

“All you need is a washboard and a tub and you have a band,” said Jackson. “It makes music accessible for a lot of people.”

The Community

“I was looking for a community of like minded freaks,” said Vagabond’s Flores of coming to Portland.

“And you found it,” said Mark Burdon, Vagabond’s drummer, laughing.

The Pohemian music scene is intertwined - members of Vagabond play in March Fourth, it seems like everyone has at least one other band, and they all know one another.

“We all stand on each other’s shoulders,” said Stern, “but at the same time we’re all striving for better and unique sound.”

For all the bands, most of the members hail from elsewhere. Some were drawn to Portland for the music, while others came for other reasons but stayed for the music.

“It constantly blows my mind,” remarked Nayana Jennings, an original member of March Fourth. “Whether it’s a middle school or an architectural firm, people respond to us. We tap into something that people were looking for, even if they didn’t know it yet.”

So the next time you see a fire engine filled with clowns, follow it; or if you spot a man with a handlebar mustache and an accordion, stop and check it out. Maybe you’ll find something you need. At the very least, you’ll witness something that makes this city an amazing place to live.

Anastasia Gornick - The St. John’s Sentinel, Portland, OR view publication’s website