David Krakauer | |
---|---|
![]() David Krakauer at Festival de Cornouaille on July 24, 2014 | |
Background information | |
Born | September 22, 1956 |
Origin | Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
Genres | Klezmer, classical, jazz |
Occupation(s) | Musician, composer |
Instrument(s) | Clarinet |
Labels | Label Bleu, Tzadik, Table Pounding |
Website | davidkrakauer |
David Krakauer (born September 22, 1956) is an American clarinetist who performs klezmer, jazz, classical music, and avant-garde improvisation. [1]
Krakauer's performance career focused on jazz and classical music before he joined the Klezmatics in 1988. [2] He sees klezmer as his "musical home," saying "I can write music within klezmer, improvise, do experimental stuff, be an interpreter and a preservationist. Every side of me can be fulfilled within this form." [2]
In 1996, he formed his own band Klezmer Madness! While firmly rooted in traditional klezmer folk tunes, the band "hurls the tradition of klezmer music into the rock era." [3] Klezmer Madness! has toured internationally to major venues and festivals including Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Stanford Lively Arts, San Francisco Performances, Hancher Auditorium, the Krannert Center, the Venice Biennale, Kraków Jewish Culture Festival, BBC Proms, Saalfelden Jazz Festival, La Cigale, the Marciac festival, WOMEX, the New Morning in Paris and many others. [4] In 2001, the rapper Socalled gave him an album that blended klezmer and hip-hop rhythms. Impressed by how "clever and funky it was," Krakauer incorporated Socalled into Klezmer Madness!, and the group began attracting a younger audience. [5]
In 2006, Krakauer and Socalled formed the band Abraham Inc. with trombonist Fred Wesley (James Brown, Parliament Funkadelic, Count Basie Orchestra). Abraham Inc.'s music mixes klezmer, funk, and hip hop. [5] The band has performed at The Apollo Theater and Symphony Space in New York, The Krannert Center in Illinois, Hancher Auditorium in Iowa, The Miller Outdoor Theater in Houston, The Strathmore in Maryland, Cal Performances, The Heineken Open'r Festival in Poland, The Cracow Jewish Culture Festival, the Transmusicales de Rennes, and Jazz a la Villette in Paris. Abraham Inc released the album Tweet Tweet in 2009 on Krakauer's own Table Pounding Records label. The album peaked at No. 1 in Funk and No. 1 in Jewish and Yiddish Music, and at No. 35 in music sales on Amazon. It reached No. 7 on Billboard's Jazz Chart and was featured at No. 40 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart. [4] In 2019, the band reunited and released a new album, Together We Stand, in response to the United States Muslim ban. [6]
Krakauer has performed with orchestras internationally including the Dresdener Philharmonie, the Pacific Symphony, the Weimar Staatskapelle, Detroit Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Colorado Music festival orchestra, Quebec Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, New World Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Komische Oper orchestra and the Orchestre Lamoureux. [4]
The clarinetist has also collaborated with composer Ofer Ben-Amots. Ben-Amots' composition Klezmer Concerto was specifically written for Krakauer to perform with string orchestra, harp and percussion. [7]
Other career highlights include touring with the Emerson String Quartet; performing during the inaugural season of Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall with renowned jazz pianist Uri Caine; an eight-year tenure with the Naumburg Award-winning Aspen Wind Quintet; tours with Music from Marlboro; composing the music for Offering, an homage to the victims of September 11 by modern dance duo Eiko and Koma; numerous performances of David Del Tredici's Magyar Madness, commissioned by Music Accord for Krakauer and the Orion String quartet; and performing in the International Emmy Award-winning BBC documentary Holocaust, A Music Memorial from Auschwitz with music by Osvaldo Golijov. [4] Krakauer also performs with South African pianist Kathleen Tagg as the Krakauer-Tagg Duo. [8]
Playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner has said "Listening to David Krakauer had a tremendously powerful effect [on me]. It helped me discover Yiddish again, which was hugely important." [9]
Krakauer partnered with the Kronos Quartet for the premiere recording of Osvaldo Golijov's The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, [10] released in 1997 on Nonesuch Records. [11] Though the original composition was created for clarinet with string quartet, Golijov created an orchestral arrangement for the conductor-less chamber orchestra A Far Cry. The premiere orchestral recording was created with Krakauer as featured soloist and included on A Far Cry's 2014 album Dreams & Prayers, [12] which was nominated in the Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance category of the 57th Grammy Awards. [13]
Krakauer's album The Big Picture, which re-imagined themes from films such as Sophie's Choice, Life is Beautiful, The Pianist, and Radio Days, was released in North America on February 18, 2014. [14] The album received 4.5 stars from Bill Milkowski at The Absolute Sound,, [15] 4 stars from All About Jazz, [16] and was a DownBeat Magazine Editors' Pick. [17]
The accompanying show features original graphic projections by New York City visual-effects firm Light of Day [18] and premiered with an eight show run at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. [19]
Krakauer's album Checkpoint with his 4-piece band Ancestral Groove was released in Europe on March 3, 2014 on Label Bleu. The band supported the album with concerts throughout Europe, including a performance at the grand opening of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews on October 29, 2014. [20]
He received a Grammy nomination in 2014, [21] a Juno nomination in 2015, the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik in 2002 [22] and a Diapason D'Or in 1998. [23]
With Anthony Coleman
With Dobrek Bistro
With White Willow
Masada is a musical group with rotating personnel led by American saxophonist and composer John Zorn since the early 1990s.
Osvaldo Noé Golijov is an Argentine composer of classical music and music professor, known for his vocal and orchestral work.
The Cracow Klezmer Band was a Polish jazz quartet formed by accordionist and composer Jarosław Bester in 1997 in the city of Kraków, and recorded for Tzadik Records. The group performed at Jewish Culture festivals in Hungary, Finland, Poland, Prague, and the Czech Republic. Its sound was different from what most people would consider to be traditional klezmer music — instead of danceable versions of traditional Yiddish songs, and free-form fantasies, and laments, The Cracow Klezmer Band played often dark and brooding but soulful and dynamic original virtuoso compositions instead in the klezmer form. Some songs could be considered dance pieces, but there were none of the traditional Bulgars, Freylekhs or Horas.
David Shifrin is an American classical clarinetist and artistic director.
Sophie Solomon is a British violinist, songwriter and composer who fuses many different musical influences into her music. She was artistic director of the Jewish Music Institute, SOAS from 2012 to 2015 and is now Chief Marketing Officer at high-growth music technology start-up ROLI.
David Bruce is a British composer and a YouTuber.
Mark Feldman is an American jazz violinist.
Joshua Dolgin, better known by his stage name Socalled, is a Canadian rapper and record producer, known for his eclectic mix of hip hop, klezmer, and other styles such as drum & bass and folk music. A pianist and accordion player, he has taught the latter at Klezfest London, where he has also run workshops in "hiphopkele". He has played with clarinetist David Krakauer's Klezmer Madness!, Michael Winograd and has also worked with artists such as rappers C-Rayz Walz, Chilly Gonzales, funk trombonist Fred Wesley, and Sophie Solomon. Dolgin has Ukrainian, Romanian and Russian roots.
Anthony Coleman is an avant-garde jazz pianist. During the 1980s and 1990s he worked with John Zorn on Cobra, Kristallnacht, The Big Gundown, Archery, and Spillane and helped push modern Jewish music into the 21st century.
Kevin Norton is an American percussionist and composer active in the New York City jazz and contemporary music scenes. He has performed and recorded with a diverse group of musicians, including Anthony Braxton, Paul Dunmall, Milt Hinton, Fred Frith, David Krakauer, Joëlle Léandre, Frode Gjerstad, Wilber Morris, James Emery, Bern Nix, and many others. In 1999, he founded Barking Hoop Recordings, a record label dedicated to releasing new and original music. Kevin Norton has also spent summers at camp Encore/Coda in Maine teaching music theory classes and private percussion classes. The label has released 11 CDs to date, which feature Norton's own groups as well as artists such as Anthony Braxton, Kevin O'Neil, Billy Stein, and the String Trio of New York.
Huw Thomas Watkins is a British composer and pianist. Born in South Wales, he studied piano and composition at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, where he received piano lessons from Peter Lawson. He then went on to read music at King's College, Cambridge, where he studied composition with Robin Holloway and Alexander Goehr, and completed an MMus in composition at the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Julian Anderson. Huw Watkins was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, where he used to teach composition. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow at the Royal College of Music.
Mohammed Fairouz is an American composer.
Geoffrey Burleson is an American classical and jazz pianist.
David Schiff is an American composer, writer and conductor whose music draws on elements of jazz, rock, and klezmer styles, showing the influence of composers as diverse as Stravinsky, Mahler, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy and Terry Riley. His music has been performed by major orchestras and festivals around the United States and by soloists David Shifrin, Regina Carter, David Taylor, Marty Ehrlich, David Krakauer, Nadine Asin and Peter Kogan. He is the author of books on the music of Elliott Carter, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington. His work has been honored by the League-ISCM National Composers Competition award and the ASCAP-Deems Taylor award for his book on Elliott Carter.
David Chesky is an American pianist, composer, producer, arranger, and co-founder of the independent, audiophile label Chesky Records. He is also co-founder and CEO of HDtracks, an online music store that sells high-resolution digital music.
Pruflas: Book of Angels Volume 18 is an album by clarinetist David Krakauer performing compositions from John Zorn's second Masada book, "The Book of Angels".
The Klezmer Concerto is piece for solo clarinet, harp, strings and percussion by Israeli-American composer Ofer Ben-Amots. The piece was both written for and dedicated to renowned klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer. The three-movement composition is marked by traditional klezmer sonorities and the use of extended techniques in the clarinet part. The Klezmer Concerto premiered in Michelstadt, Germany on July 15, 2006 as part of the Michelstadt Musiknacht 2006.
Doron Toister is a cellist, pianist, composer and classical music arranger. He leads the cello group of the Israeli Rishon Lezion Symphony Orchestra and Israeli Opera Orchestra.
Airat Rafailovich Ichmouratov born 28 June 1973, is a Volga Tatar born Russian / Canadian composer, conductor and klezmer clarinetist. He is a founding member and clarinetist of award-winning Montreal-based klezmer group Kleztory and invited professor at Laval University in Quebec, Canada.
Mathew Rosenblum is an American composer whose works have been commissioned, recorded and performed by musical groups such as the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, FLUX Quartet, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and Newband among other ensembles, in venues throughout North America, Europe and Asia including the Andy Warhol Museum, Leipzig's Gewandhaus, the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, Thailand's Prince Mahidol Hall, as well as Merkin Hall, the Guggenheim Museum, the Miller Theatre, The Kitchen, Carnegie Recital Hall, and Symphony Space in New York City. Rosenblum's music has been recorded on such labels as Mode Records, New World Records, Albany Records, Capstone Records, Opus One Records, New Focus Recordings, and the Composers Recordings Inc. label, and has been published by Edition Peters, of Leipzig, London, and New York.