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Frank London (born 1958 in New York [1] ) is an American klezmer trumpeter who also plays jazz and world music.
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Frank London (born 1958 in New York [1] ) is an American klezmer trumpeter who also plays jazz and world music.
London was born to a Reform Jewish family and grew up in New York and Connecticut. He started playing the trumpet in fourth grade. [1]
London received a B.A. in Afro-American music from the New England Conservatory in 1980. He is on the music faculty of the State University of New York at Purchase. He is a member of The Klezmatics, Hasidic New Wave, and leads Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars. He was a co-founder of Les Misérables Brass Band and the Klezmer Conservatory Band. He served as conductor and music director for David Byrne and Robert Wilson's The Knee Plays and has collaborated with the Palestinian American violinist Simon Shaheen.
He has worked with Chava Alberstein, Lester Bowie, John Cale, Gal Costa, Ben Folds Five, Avraham Fried, Allen Ginsberg, Anne LeBaron, LL Cool J, Luna, Maurice El Mediouni, Natalie Merchant, David Murray, Itzhak Perlman, Iggy Pop, Jerome Rothenberg, [2] Marc Ribot, Jane Siberry, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, They Might Be Giants, Mel Tormé, Reggie Workman, La Monte Young, Lev Zhurbin, and John Zorn.
Frank London with Lorin Sklamberg (Klezmatics singer):
Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars:
The Shekhina Big Band:
Film and theater music:
Soundtracks:
Hasidic New Wave:
With Jon Madof's Zion80
With Auktyon
London has composed numerous works for theater, dance, and film, and is the recipient of several Meet the Composer grants. Some of his major works include the folk opera A Night in the Old Marketplace (based on Y. L. Peretz's Bay nakht oyfn altn mark); Davenen, a dance for the Pilobolus Dance Theatre and the Klezmatics; Great Small Works' The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln, and Min Tanaka's Romance. In 2011, A Night in the Old Marketplace was workshopped and premiered at MassMOCA.
He has also composed music for films, including John Sayles' The Brother from Another Planet (1984) and Men With Guns (1997), Yvonne Rainer's Murder and Murder, the Czech-American Marionette Theater's Golem, and Tamar Rogoff's Ivye Project .
He has been featured on HBO's Sex and the City soundtrack, at the North Sea Jazz Festival, and at the Lincoln Center Summer Festival. He attends various workshops throughout the year, including KlezKanada of Montreal, where he teaches aspiring musicians the art of klezmer music. He has taught Jewish music in Canada, Crimea, and the Catskills and is Artistic Director of KlezFest London in London, England.
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.
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