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The Klezmer Conservatory Band is a Boston-based group which performs traditional klezmer music; it was formed by Hankus Netsky of the New England Conservatory of Music in 1980. Originally formed for a single concert, they have gone on to release eleven albums.
Netsky is the grandson and nephew of traditional klezmer musicians. He was inspired by jam sessions with Irish musicians to attempt something with klezmer music. He recruited many of the musicians from the New England Conservatory of Music's Third Stream department with the majority having jazz or folk backgrounds.
In 1988, the band featured in a documentary on klezmer called A Jumpin Night in the Garden of Eden. It has also provided soundtracks for a number of films and theatrical productions including:
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Klezmer is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for listening; these would have been played at weddings and other social functions. The musical genre incorporated elements of many other musical genres including Ottoman music, Baroque music, German and Slavic folk dances, and religious Jewish music. As the music arrived in the United States, it lost some of its traditional ritual elements and adopted elements of American big band and popular music. Among the European-born klezmers who popularized the genre in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s were Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein; they were followed by American-born musicians such as Max Epstein, Sid Beckerman and Ray Musiker.
Germany claims some of the most renowned composers, singers, producers and performers of the world. Germany is the largest music market in Europe, and third largest in the world.
Massachusetts is a U.S. state in New England. The music of Massachusetts has developed actively since it was first colonized by Britain. The city of Boston is an especially large part of the state's present music scene, which includes several genres of rock, as well as classical, folk, and hip hop music.
The vast majority of the inhabitants of the United States are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. This article will focus on the music of these communities and discuss its roots in countries across Africa, Europe and Asia, excluding only Native American music, indigenous and immigrant Latinos, Puerto Rican music, Hawaiian music and African American music. The music of Irish- and Scottish-Americans will be a special focus, due to their extreme influence on Appalachian folk music and other genres. These sorts of music are often sustained and promoted by a variety of ethnic organizations.
Donald Byron is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist. He primarily plays clarinet but has also played bass clarinet and saxophone in a variety of genres that includes free jazz and klezmer.
Naftule Brandwein, or Naftuli Brandwine, was an Austrian-born Jewish American Klezmer musician, clarinetist, bandleader and recording artist active from the 1910s to the 1940s. Along with Dave Tarras, he is considered to be among the top klezmer musicians of the twentieth century, and has a continuing influence on musicians in the genre a century later. Along with Tarras and other contemporaries like Israel J. Hochman, Max Leibowitz and Harry Kandel, he also helped forge the new American klezmer sound of the early twentieth century, which gradually gravitated towards a sophisticated big-band sound.
Harry Kandel was an American clarinetist and klezmer bandleader of the early twentieth century. His recording career with the Victor Recording Company lasted from 1916 to 1927, during which he released dozens of Jewish music records.
Frank London is an American klezmer trumpeter who also plays jazz and world music.
German Goldenshteyn, or Goldenshtayn was a Romanian-born American klezmer musician.
Dave Tarras was a Ukrainian-born American klezmer clarinetist and bandleader, who was instrumental in the Klezmer revival.
Alan Bern is an American Jewish composer, pianist, accordionist, educator and cultural activist, based in Berlin since 1987. He is the founding artistic director of Yiddish Summer Weimar and the Other Music Academy (OMA). He is internationally recognized for his contributions to the research, dissemination and creative renewal of Jewish music with Brave Old World, The Other Europeans and the Semer Ensemble, among others. He is the creator of Present-Time Composition, a musical and educational approach informed by cognitive science that integrates the methods of improvisation and composition. In 2016 he received the Weimar Prize in recognition of major cultural contributions to the city of Weimar. In 2017 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Free State of Thuringia, and in 2022 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Joel Rubin is an American clarinetist, klezmer musician, ethnomusicologist, and scholar of Jewish music. Since becoming involved in the klezmer revival in the late 1970s, he has been researching, teaching and performing klezmer music and related genres. He has been a member of, or performed with, such groups as Brave Old World, the Joel Rubin Ensemble, and Veretski Pass.
Abraham "Abe" Elenkrig was a Russian-born American klezmer bandleader, Cornet player, barber and recording artist of the early twentieth century. He was among the earliest bandleaders to record klezmer music in the United States, making a series of discs for Victor Recording Company and Columbia Records from 1913 to 1915. In 2009, the Library of Congress named his 1913 recording Fon der Choope to the National Recording Registry.
Shlemiel the First is a musical adaptation of the "Chelm stories" of Isaac Bashevis Singer about the supposedly wise men of that legendary town, and a fool named Shlemiel. It was conceived and adapted by Robert Brustein, with lyrics by Arnold Weinstein and music based on traditional klezmer music and Yiddish theater songs by Hankus Netsky of the Klezmer Conservatory Band and Zalmen Mlotek, who wrote additional music and arrangements, and served as the musical director of the original production. Singer had written a non-musical theatrical adaptation of the stories, Shlemiel the First, which Brustein produced in 1974 when he was the artistic director of Yale Repertory Theater in New Haven, and this served to provide the basic material for the musical.
Hankus Netsky is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and ethnomusicologist. He chairs the Contemporary Improvisation Department at the New England Conservatory. Netsky is founder and director of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, an internationally renowned Yiddish music ensemble, and serves as research director of the Klezmer Conservatory Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and perpetuation of traditional Eastern European Jewish music. He plays the piano, accordion, and saxophone.
The New Klezmer Quintet is a traditional klezmer band originally from the Washington, D.C. area. The group is also a neo-klezmer ensemble performing klezmer music while incorporating elements of modern Israeli folk music, ladino, jazz, Swing music, Latin music, and rock and roll styles. The band was formed in 2001 at the Lansing Michigan Jazz Festival when a group of independent conservatory trained professional musicians with their own bands came together to jam. The New Klezmer Quintet has an older sister band called The Kol Haruach Orchestra which plays private events, while the main band plays strictly concert venues. Kol Haruach means voice of the spirit which embodies the groups improvisational and audience pleasing performance style.
Margot Leverett is a New York-based clarinettist. Born in Ohio, she lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Buffalo, New York before studying at Indiana University School of Music. At Indiana, she was classically trained. Leverett later became interested in klezmer, a traditional musical style of the Jews of Eastern Europe. She studied with klezmer clarinettist Sidney Beckerman and was a founding member of The Klezmatics in 1985. The Klezmatics, a band associated with the Klezmer revival would later become the first klezmer band to win a Grammy Award.
KlezKanada is a Canadian organization for the promotion of klezmer music and Yiddish culture. Its principal program is a week-long Jewish music festival founded in 1996 that takes place annually in August at Camp B'nai B'rith in Lantier, Quebec. The organization also hosts workshops, concerts, and other educational programs in Montreal throughout the year.
Itzikl Kramtweiss or Krantweiss, also known by the anglicized name Isadore Krantweiss, was a Russian-born American klezmer musician and recording artist of the early twentieth century. He was leader of the Broder Kapelle, a popular klezmer orchestra in Philadelphia which made recordings for the Victor Recording Company in the late 1920s.
Michael Winograd is an American klezmer clarinetist and composer. He has performed with such groups and artists as Vulfpeck, Tarras Band, Geoff Berner, Socalled, Adrienne Cooper, Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird and Michael Winograd and the Honorable Mentshn.