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Bio
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More About Charming Hostess
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Charming Hostess is a whirl of eerie harmony, hot rhythm and radical braininess. Our music explores the intersection of text and the sounding body-- complex ideas expressed physically, based on voice and vocal percussion, handclaps and heartbeats, sex-breath and silence. We live where diasporas collide, incorporating piyyutim and Pygmy counterpoint, doo-wop and niggunim, work songs and Torah chanting.
Charming Hostess is now working on The Bowls Project, a performance installation based on sex, magic and the apocalypse in Babylonian Jewish amulets. Incantation bowls were inscribed with a householder’s secrets and desires, then buried under the home. The texts speak of mysticism and sex; angels and demons; and the trials and joys of love and sex. Especially audible are the voices of women--their work, hopes, and dreams. The Bowls Project offers a visceral, personal connection to daily life 1500 years ago in the region now known as Iraq.
Musical context for The Bowls Project is drawn from the female body, the rich traditions of the Babylonian Jews, and other diaspora sources, both Jewish and African. Jewlia Eisenberg founded Charming Hostess to explore the relationship between text and the sounding body and The Bowls Project continues this endeavor.
CDs for the Tzadik label include Sarajevo Blues, which sets Bosnian resistance poetry, and Trilectic, a look at the political-erotic world of Walter Benjamin. The Tzadik CDs are part of the Nerdy-Sexy-Commie-Girlie genre. Big band Hostess CDs include Eat and Punch, both part of the Klezmer/Punk-Balkan/Funk genre.
Charming Hostess: Jewlia Eisenberg, Jason Ditzian, Marika Hughes, Cynthia Taylor and often Ganda Suthivarikom. Read more about the Hostesses.
JEWLIA EISENBERG
Jewlia Eisenberg is a composer, extended-technique vocalist, lay cantor, and the founder of Charming Hostess. She is interested in the particular emotional, erotic and spiritual terrains that the voice can traverse. Her work explores the intersection of text and the sounding body, pushing for translation strategies between verbal and non-verbal languages. Collaborators include anarcholits Fantom Slobode, choreographer Jo Kreiter and filmmaker Lynn Sachs. Commissioned work includes Harmonices Mundi, an opera about Kepler’s mother, and Red Rosa, a song cycle based on the letters of Rosa Luxemburg. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at MIT and University of Denver; she has studied with sozanda Muna Nissimova, Fred Frith and Daniel Boyarin. Hobbies include class war, knitting, and smashing SUV windshields. Brooklyn born and bred, she now calls San Francisco home.
JASON DITZIAN
Jason Ditzian is a multi-wind instrumentalist/composer who performs on single reeds, double reeds, flutes, and jaw harps. He has composed and performed numerous works for dance, movie and theater, including an Isadora Duncan Dance Award winning collaboration with butoh maestros Koichi and Hiroko Tamano, and touring as co-composer/band leader for the Tony Award winning San Francisco Mime Troupe. Jason is horn section leader for soul band, Lord Loves a Working Man; leader of klezmer ensemble, Kugelplex; and clarinetist in the Georges Brassens cover band, Les Croque-Notes. Upcoming projects include composing for Featherlead productions play, The Breeze at Dawn (November 2007) at the Traveling Jewish Theater and co-composer for The Misadventures of Flapjack, a new series on the Cartoon Network (winter 2008). Jason has played and/or recorded with folks such as Faun Fables, Kunst-Stoff Experimental Dance ensemble, Myra Melford, Yuko Kaseki, and eXtreme Elvis. When he’s not tooting on his clarinet, Jason can be found doing publicity for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, working as a freelance writer, and importing beautiful bansuris and harmoniums from India.
MARIKA HUGHES
The life of Marika Hughes has always been characterized by the seamless merging of disparate worlds. Granddaughter of the legendary cellist Emmanuel Feuermann, Marika began playing the violin when she was 3 and was soon seduced by the sonorous sounds of the cello. She grew up playing classical music and listening to jazz at Burgundy, a club her parents ran in NYC. Since earning a double degree at Juilliard/Barnard College in cello performance and political science, both pursuits have maintained an important role in her life.
After college, Marika moved to the Bay Area. She has played with the Santa Rosa Symphony and Quartet San Francisco, and has recorded for Tin Hat Trio, Santana and Mr. Bungle. She formed the band Red Pocket (Tzadik) with Jewlia Eisenberg. Marika is best known for her work with singer-songstress Vienna Teng (Rounder) and with the fabulous 2 Foot Yard (Tzadik) where she creates her own niche as both chamber-musician and bass-player.
CYNTHIA TAYLOR
Cynthia Taylor was raised in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains at Garrod Farms Stables & the Cooper/Garrod Vineyards where she learned from Mother Nature, while coaching & competing in horse vaulting. She began music early-- from lullabies with her mother to public school classical violin, choirs & musicals, and some fiddling chops, to opera at SFSU. She holds a Creative Arts BA (Music Performance/Arts Administration). She has performed in R&B, jazz, & techno rock bands locally and in Germany and loves working with composers. She also performed for a decade with the Oakland Opera Theater and produced her own Lullaby CD. As an arts administrator/educator she’s worked with SFJAZZ, Oasis For Girls (executive director), UNESCO via ‘06 ZeroOne San Jose international art & technology festival (education director). The program she curated at YBCA, Young Artists at Work, won the Coming Up Taller Award, from The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. Cynthia is currently consulting in executive & organizational leadership with organizations related to the arts, youth, race/gender/class, community activism and good people. |
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