“Vagrant Valentine”

- 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