As part of Jewish Cultural Month Plymouth Jewish Community CIC have organised an event called Klezmer by the Sea featuring The Klezmer Village Band.

Director Louise Clements gives us the flavour of the music: “As a child, I went to lots of bar mitzvahs and weddings and things like that where it was always great music and everybody danced.

“A few years ago my son Tom and I went to Klezmer in the park in Regent's Park, and it was a fabulous sunny day and they had all different kinds of klezmer music.

“It started off in Eastern Europe, but actually since the war, it sort of died out and then it sort of morphed into jazz klezmer. “

Both Louise and Tom are now involved in the Plymouth Jewish Community CIC which organises a variety of Jewish-themed events for both Jews and non-Jews.

Louise said: “We wanted to do another event in the year, and so that's how Klezmer by the Sea came up.

“I was keen to do it but couldn't find a hook for it.

“Board of Deputies of British Jews has launched Jewish Cultural Month.

“They want to encourage Jewish cultural events outside of London and there's a whole programme of events that they've agreed to throughout the country and we are one of them.

“We've got their backing, not that they're giving us any money, but you know, it's nice that they are, and they are publicising us as well. “

Louise said she is very grateful to the TRP: “The Theatre Royal Plymouth have been fantastic.

“They’re organising it in more of a cabaret style so it will be much more informal.

“I'm hoping that people will get up and dance.

“Well, I'll be dancing, but I don't know and then the next day we've got an outreach programme, and the band are going out to schools to perform and talk about klezmer.

So I think that's a great way, I mean, of introducing people to Jewish cultural life.”

Louise then explained a bit more about klezmer: “We've got three players: clarinet, violin, and bass.

“Klezmer means ‘vessel of song’ in Yiddish.

“The typical klezmer band were itinerant so that they would go around all the shtetls, for bar mitzvahs, weddings all those kind of things, and they'd move around.

“They were, they were Ashkenazi Jews and a lot of Romanian, Ukrainian, Balkan and gypsy music was incorporated as they went round and that's, that's how it came about.

It's joyous, but with bittersweet moments as well. before the pace is picked up again.”

The group’s musicians have brought klezmer music to audiences around the world: a collaboration between Ilana Cravitz (violin), John Macnaughton (clarinet) and Theo Malka-Wishart (double bass), members of the group have formed and performed with some of the best-known ensembles on the klezmer scene, including the London Klezmer Quartet, Klezmer Foygl, She’Koyokh and Oysland.

Klezmer by the Sea takes place in the Drum at the Theatre Royal Plymouth on Wednesday, June 10.