“A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy no?”
These eight words open the first scene of Fiddler on the Roof, one of the greatest works of the American musical theatre, a show that has captivated the world, since it first opened on Broadway in September, 1964 and established composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick as two leading lights of a new generation of theater music revolutionaries that included Stephen Sondheim, Jule Styne, Charles Strouse, and Jerry Herman
Set in Eastern Russia in 1905, the show has been played by an orchestra of various sizes – but if you lived in the village of Anatevka, you would have been listening to a small group of musicians known as Klezmorim who played what we call today traditional Yiddish music.
Producer Stephen Pearl re-orchestrated and recorded a version of Fiddler on The Roof with a Klezmer Band for his Stage Stars label, which features original and unique releases of major Broadway musicals of the present and past in two-disc sets – one with singers, and the other an orchestral disc that aspiring artists and fans theater music can sing along to. This release features the instrumental-only “karaoke” program, which brings a new dimension to the music of this Broadway classic!
