MUSIC

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Moments Like These Like a Circle in a SpiralTwo Kites Moments Like These

OTHER PROJECTS

 
Silent Films Free Improvisation World Music

Silent Films

Fern has composed and improvised music for silent movies, beginning in 2010 with a commission from the Toronto International Film Festival to prepare a klezmer/jazz score for Buster Keaton’s 1924 classic comedy Sherlock Jr., which was screened at the opening of the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Fern’s original score was for sextet but she has also performed the music with a trio and as a solo pianist.

Fern returned to the TIFF Bell Lightbox in 2012 as part of Nuit Blanche, improvising scores for a three-hour program of early surreal and horror silents, including Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon and a Lon Chaney/Joan Crawford classic, The Unknown. In 2013, she performed her original scores for comedies by Harold Lloyd, Fatty Arbuckle and others at the Toronto Silent Film Festival and for Charlie Chaplin’s “The Circus” at the Vintage Film Festival. She has also performed for screenings at the Barrie Film Festival, TIFF Kids, Ashkenaz and KlezKanada.
Presenters require only a projector and screen. Fern can provide a DVD of the films.

Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. with Fern Lindzon’s klezmer/jazz sextet

Here is an interview with Karen Gordon for CBC’s Fresh Air about composing silent film music.

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Free Improvisation

Fern is a member of  AIM (Association of Improvising Musicians) Toronto. She often performs with the Toronto Improvisers’ Orchestra, as well as with Christine Duncan’s Elements Choir, and in 2013 presented her Tout Suite at the  416 Creative Improvisers’ Festival.

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World Music

Fern performed and toured in Canada, the United States and Europe as music director from 2005 and 2011 of the Sisters of Sheynville, a Yiddish/swing/klezmer sextet that won a Canadian Folk Music Award in 2010 as Vocal Group of the Year. Fern has also appeared with the Canadian-American Lithuanian Empire, and has participated in several other international collaborations through her involvement with KlezKanada and Alan Bern’s Yiddish Summer Weimar.

In 2011 she introduced her own program, Forgotten Memories, fusing old Yiddish traditions with contemporary jazz, in a concert at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts., and in 2013 presented  From Minsk to Tel Aviv during Jewish Music Week. Later that same year, she introduced the role of Sanoy the angel in the world premiere at Klezkanada of Josh Horowitz’ opera Lilith.

“Yam Lid/Lustige Chasidm/Balkan Bellabusta”, CBC Radio 2, Live Recording

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