02/02/99
'It's part of why I like singing,' he said last week from New York, 'and if normal singing makes me feel expressive, when I sing in Yiddish it doubles or triples it.' That intensity of emotions will hit the Kennedy Center Feb. 9-11 when Patinkin begins a concert tour with three performances of 'Mamaloshen' (Yiddish for mother tongue), a nostalgic rendering of Yiddish and American songs.
Expanded from his 1998 Nonesuch album of the same name, the song list consists of ballads, dances and folk tunes dating to the turn of the century, including ditties many a Jewish elder has sung to many a grandchild - 'Raisins and Almonds (Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen)' and 'Oyfn Pripetshik' among them. Other songs recall the sinking of the Titanic, a man killed in a strike and a drunken rabbi. English explanations will be projected on a wall.
Weaving the songs together with snatches of Paul Simon's 'American Tune,' Patinkin means to call up the universal immigrant experience. 'It is certainly being told through a Jew's eyes...but the way it is designed is to tell the story of being an American immigrant; so the metaphor is clear that it is for everyone.' Between two groupings of Yiddish numbers, Patinkin will perform pop tunes in English.
Brought up on Chicago's South Side, the 46-year-old stage ('Evita'), screen ('The Princess Bride') and television ('Chicago Hope') star had to learn Yiddish for this show but always recognized the link between the shtetl and Tin Pan Alley, between emotional, story-driven Yiddish song tradition and the American musical theater nurtured by its descendents, from Irving Berlin to Stephen Sondheim.
'I feel that all the music and the nature of the stories are very similar. When you listen to just the music, they meld beautifully,' he said. 'It's all from the same land and the same heart.'"