The Klezmatics
Thursday, 0, , 12:00 am (doors open at 7:00 pm)

Grammy-winning Jewish roots band celebrates 30th anniversary

$28 adv / $30 door

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The Klezmatics“The Klezmatics aren’t just the best band in the klezmer vanguard,” says Time Out New York, “on a good night, they can rank among the greatest bands on the planet.” Since their founding in New York in 1986, the band has released twelve albums, including the winner of the 2006 Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music Album, Wonder Wheel, which features previously unsung lyrics by Woody Guthrie set to their original compositions and their most recent album, Apikorsim/Heretics. Original is a good word for the band. They were klezmer when klezmer wasn’t cool, and over the years they’ve raised the bar for Eastern European Jewish music, making a series of beautiful, political, inspirational recordings and helping to change the face of contemporary Yiddish culture.

 

The current incarnation of the band includes original members Lorin Sklamberg on lead vocals, accordion, guitar, and piano, Frank London on trumpet, keyboards, and vocals, and Paul Morrissett on bass, tsimbl, and vocals, as well as longtime members Matt Darriau on clarinet, saxophone, kaval, and vocals and Lisa Gutkin on violin and vocals. The band has appeared often on A Prairie Home Companion and Mountain Stage; they performed with Itzhak Perlman on PBS’s Great Performances: In the Fiddler’s House, which won an Emmy; and they played at Charlotte’s wedding on HBO’s Sex in the City. In fact, they’ve collaborated with a remarkable array of artists, from Tony Kushner to Twyla Tharp, Arlo Guthrie to Allen Ginsberg, Neil Sedaka to John Zorn. “Klezmer has everything you want, ethnically, and yet it’s so intertwined with American culture,” Paul Morrissett says. “We want to make sure that we are part of a living tradition, and living traditions change; they don’t stay in a pickled form.” For an evening of living, breathing, heart-pounding klezmer, you owe it to yourself to catch the Klezmatics this Hanukkah season at the Freight.

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