Keith Benjamin, a fabulous trumpeter at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, asked me to write a piece for him and organist Melody Steed for a CD of commissioned works. While the combination of trumpet and organ is not an unfamiliar one, works that I knew of were typically from the Baroque era and for organ with lots of brass instruments. While I was very enthusiastic about writing this piece, I kept finding myself at running into the proverbial “composer’s block,” not finding the right kind of voice or sensibility.

With the deadline quickly approaching, I decided to force myself into a different way of thinking about the piece. And I asked myself the following question: what would be the least likely kind of music you would hear from this combination of instruments?

My path forward became crystal clear: klezmer music. Eine kleine yiddishe Spaß (a little yiddish fun) builds on several traditional yiddish tunes (Ay Rumania, Hava Nagila), and slowly but steadily spins itself into a whirlwind. Another ‘joke’ is the title, a play on Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Except that while the noun “musik” is a feminine gendered word, the noun “Spaß” or “Spass” is masculine. So the correct way to say “a little yiddish fun” in German should be “ein kleiner yiddishe Spaß.”

That said, I prefer the reference to Mozart over correct German grammer.