Jody Kruskal

Thanks Jim. Yes, I've come to enjoy exploring just how slow a tune can go.

https://soundcloud.com/parallel_play2020/sweet-marie Sweet Marie is featured as the latest tune from Parallel Play, my ongoing duet project with autoharpist Cindy Harris. Even though we live 380 miles away from each other, we have been playing nightly using the miraculous JamKazam platform. JamKazam makes it possible for us to play live and also record high quality audio of our performance. We then mix those files the same way we would normally do, after a face to face studio recording session. I think that this delightfully crooked tune got its start as a p

I wrote this beautiful waltz back in 2009. Somehow, it got lost in the shuffle and was never performed... until now. “A Beauty” is featured as the latest tune from Parallel Play, my ongoing duet project with autoharpist Cindy Harris. Even though we live 380 miles away from each other, we have been playing nightly using the miraculous JamKazam platform. JamKazam makes it possible for us to play live and also record high quality audio of our performance. We then mix those files the same way we would normally do, after a face to face studio recording session. H

Well, the concert was a grand success. You can still catch our set here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRkG4QQPDQM Just go to 3:32... or enjoy the whole thing!

A few weeks ago, JamKazam announced that they were planning a live classical music festival and asked jammers to volunteer to perform. Cindy and I strategized on how we might present ourselves as a classical duo and volunteered. We're going to play English Country Dance tunes from the 17th and 18th centuries and a few modern tunes in the genre, all in the JamKazam Classical Music Festival on Saturday, Jan 2. The festival starts at 12pm CST (that's 1 pm EST, 9 am PST I think). Theoretically, if everyone keeps to their time slot, Parallel Play should be on around 3:45 pm EST.

Thanks Isel. David, right you are. I learned this tune in a wild and noisy session in the Camp House at Pinewoods long ago from a very young Emily Troll, back when she was on crew. So, I'm playing it from ear and memory, not dots. Interestingly, I played it for Emily many years later and she claims to have never known the tune. Go figure!

I love playing "Because He Was A Bonnie Lad"

Cindy and I have been having some more fun, so here's a zippy little Irish polka on autoharp and concertina we recorded over JamKazam. Aren't modal tunes just so compelling? We love them! https://soundcloud.com/parallel_play2020/niely-cleeres-polka

Cindy and I have added a new tune to our collection: Springfield. It's a little improv we did on Errynn Marshall's lovely tune. We've heard it played much faster, but at this slower tempo it's rather dreamy and exposes interesting opportunities for harmony and rhythm. Listen here: https://soundcloud.com/parallel_play2020

Cindy Harris (autoharp, Pittsburgh, PA) and Jody Kruskal (concertina, Brooklyn, NY) have been collaborating over JamKazam during the COVID-19 pandemic. The name of our new duo is Parallel Play. Here are three of our recorded tunes... more on the way. Grand Picnic Salmon Tails Up The River Springfield

I also offer online lessons for the Anglo concertina. I play and teach in the harmonic style where melody and accompaniment are both going at the same time. Um-pa, parallel harmony, octaves, bass lines and fiddle like double stops are just a few of the treats available. I teach English session and dance tunes as well as Swedish, American, Old time, Irish and more. http://jodykruskal.com/concertina_lessons.html

Hi Polavoy, thanks for the kind words. JamKazam (JK) does have a record feature, but we have found it difficult to set levels and get clean audio recording in the app. Instead, we play together in JK but we each record ourselves locally in Quicktime. Cindy emails me her takes and I do the editing just as I would for any project. I use ProTools for the mix and Audacity for the mastering.

A few years ago, when I first played concertina with auto-harpist Cindy Harris, I knew I had met a kindred spirit. We began playing together more often and even performed at a few festivals. We started to develop a common bunch of tunes that work for this odd combination of auto-harp and anglo concertina. The more we played, the better it got... Then the pandemic hit and the festivals were cancelled. We both discovered JamKazam and we’ve been playing live together almost every night since March 2020. Cindy in Pittsburg and me in Brooklyn. Our duo now has a n

For a few decades now, here in NYC, we have stopped calling them “Mail Men”. We now are enlightened enough to be calling them “Mail Carriers” because females have been increasingly doing this mail delivery job in greater numbers. Not so much with the “Garbage Men.” I’ve never seen a female doing this particular job, though I’m sure there must be a few out there somewhere. A few months ago, on some random Jamkazam Old Time session, I brought this little factoid up in conversation. The next day, two folks there, independently, ran with the idea and were inspired to eac

I live in Brooklyn, NY, USA. All the cancelled festivals, sessions, contra dances and school, wedding and bar gigs etc. have left me bereft. My Autumn UK tour of folk clubs that I should be doing around now is long gone. Two bright sides have been that I have started bicycling around Prospect Park every day since the summer. Sometimes twice around, and those trousers that stopped fitting me 10 years ago... now I can button them at the waist again. Also on the bright side, since March, I’ve been playing nightly with Pittsburgh autoharpist, Cindy Harris on Jamkazam and w