Berkeley Balkan Bacchanal
At the Starry Plough Pub presents…

The Keepers (11 pm)
Alex Hand Band (10 pm)
Baymele (9 pm)

Friday, December 14
The Starry Plough, 3101 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CA

Doors at 8:00pm; Show at 9:00pm.
$10 presale tickets are available online
$12-15 sliding scale at the door
Kitchen closes at 10:00 pm (ages 21+ thereafter)
Facebook Event

The Keepers start with a bedrock of traditional Arabic beats by brother Faisal Zedan, add a layer of impeccable accordion by Dan Cantrell, and finish it off with a harmonious frenzy of horns by Joey and Calvin Lai.

With a setlist that ranges from Bulgarian wedding tunes to hot club jazz, the Alex Hand Band mines the common ground between swing and Eastern European folk dance music–the soundtrack of Western music moving across Balkan borders and being changed by European village music. Alex Hand is a guitarist, currently based in the San Francisco area. Alex’s musical journey has taken him from classic rock and punk to classical guitar, jazz and the Django Reinhardt tradition.
Bay Area klezmer trio Baymele (“little tree” in Yiddish) brings together fiddler Matthew Stein, cellist Misha Khalikulov, and accordionist Dmitri Gaskin. Cultivating and celebrating Ashkenazi Jewish musical identity, their repertoire includes Jewish and co-territorial tunes from Romania, Poland, and Ukraine, Yiddish folk song, Jewish art music, and new compositions and improvisation.