Please join Musica Reginae as we welcome David Krakauer and his Klezmer Quartet. David Krakauer is one of the most important and influential musicians in new Jewish music today and of the vital new wave of klezmer. He is known mostly for his amplified sound, pushing the boundaries of klezmer to include elements of jazz, rock, funk and hip-hop.
In this program, Krakauer will present acoustic versions of his original compositions, mixed with classic tunes from the traditional Eastern European Jewish klezmer repertoire. This will be an opportunity to hear Krakauer’s distinctive sound up close and personal, completely unplugged. The audience will bear witness to some incredible mind reading between four musicians who have been playing together for years.
www.davidkrakauer.com
David Krakauer
Only a select few artists have the ability to convey their message to the back row, to galvanize an audience with a visceral power that connects on a universal level. David Krakauer is such an artist. Widely considered one of the greatest clarinetists on the planet with his own unique sound and approach, he has been praised internationally as a key innovator in modern klezmer as well as a major voice in classical music. In 2015 he received a Grammy nomination as soloist with the conductorless chamber orchestra "A Far Cry".
Krakauer began his journey with the music of his Eastern European Jewish cultural heritage at the end of the 1980s as the Berlin Wall was falling, and culture from “behind the Iron Curtain” began to emerge in the West. Inspired by these massive cultural shifts, he began to explore klezmer music as he sought to connect with his Jewish identity in a deeper way. He very quickly became a creator in his own right; first as a member of the ground-breaking band “The Klezmatics” (that launched the second klezmer revival of the early 90s), then as an integral part of John Zorn’s Radical Jewish Culture movement, and ultimately as a composer, soloist, and band leader in the klezmer genre.
His wide array of projects, solo appearances, and multi-genre collaborations includes ensembles, conductors, composers and individual artists such as the WDR Big Band, Abraham Inc. (co-led with Fred Wesley and Socalled), the Emerson Quartet, Marin Alsop, Wlad Mathulets, Leonard Slatkin (Orchestre de Lyon), Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Quatuor Debussy, JoAnn Falletta, George Tsontakis, Anakronic Electro Orkestra, and Kathleen Tagg (pianist and co-creator of Breath & Hammer).
Krakauer’s discography contains some of the most important clarinet recordings of recent decades. Among them are The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind (Osvaldo Golijov and the Kronos Quartet/Nonesuch), which received the Diapason D’Or in France, The Twelve Tribes (Label Bleu) which was designated album of the year in the jazz category for the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, and Paul Moravec’s Pulitzer Prize-winning composition Tempest Fantasy (Naxos). He has also recorded with violinist Itzhak Perlman/The Klezmatics (Angel) and Dawn Upshaw/Osvaldo Golijov (Deutsche Grammophon). Other notable releases include his 2015 album Checkpoint with his band Ancestral Groove (Label Bleu), Mathew Rosenblum’s concerto “Lament/Witches’ Sabbath” with BMOP (New Focus), Klezmer NY (Tzadik), Tweet Tweet and Together We Stand with Abraham Inc. (Label Bleu) and Breath & Hammer on his own label, Table Pounding Records. He can be heard in Danny Elfman’s score for the Ang Lee film Taking Woodstock and throughout Sally Potter’s The Tango Lesson.
Most recently, Krakauer has been co-composing a number of large scale works with Kathleen Tagg including a fantasy for concert band, a clarinet concerto commissioned by the Santa Rosa Symphony (lead commissioner), the Eugene Symphony and The Adele and John Gray Endowment Fund, and the score for Minyan, by filmmaker Eric Steel. Additional new productions include the co-creation of Mazel Tov Cocktail Party!, a festive genre-crossing project released in February 2022.
As an esteemed educator, David Krakauer is on the clarinet and chamber music faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, the Mannes College of Music (New School) and The Bard Conservatory.
Jerome Harris
Jerome Harris has won international recognition as one of the more versatile and penetrating stylists of his generation on both guitar and bass guitar. Harris's first major professional performances were as bass guitarist with Sonny Rollins in 1978; from 1988 to 1994 he was Rollins' guitarist, and appears on five of his recordings. Over the past two decades, Jerome has also recorded and/or performed live on six continents with such jazz notables as Jack DeJohnette, Bill Frisell, Ray Anderson, Don Byron, Bobby Previte, Oliver Lake, Amina Claudine Myers, Bob Stewart, George Russell, Julius Hemphill, and Bob Moses. Harris’s work as a bandleader has produced four acclaimed recordings, including the most recent Rendezvous, the first-ever record produced by audio connoisseur magazine Stereophile.
Michael Sarin
Over the last twenty-five years, drummer Michael Sarin has been at the center of New York City’s genre bending jazz and improvisation community. His versatility and musical wit helped forge long associations with forward-looking artists Thomas Chapin, Dave Douglas, Myra Melford, Ben Allison, and David Krakauer. He has contributed to recordings by the aforementioned artists as well as those of Frank Carlberg, Anthony Coleman, Mark Dresser, Marty Ehrlich, Mark Helias, Denman Maroney, Simon Nabatov, Mario Pavone, Ned Rothenberg, and Fred Wesley--recordings found on numerous music critics’ Top Ten CD year-end lists. Since moving to New York in 1989, Sarin’s unique style and approach to the drum set has been highly sought after by NYC and European musicians looking to expand the definitions of jazz and improvised music.
Will Holshouser
Will Holshouser was given an accordion as a surprise when he was still young and impressionable. He has since found a unique niche for himself as an accordionist, improviser, and composer in many different areas of music. In addition to his work with Acoustic Klezmer Quartet, Holshouser tours regularly with jazz violinist Regina Carter and her band Reverse Thread, plays in a collaborative trio with Amsterdam-based improvisers drummer Han Bennink & saxophonist/clarinetist Michael Moore, and collaborates with trumpeter Ron Horton and bassist Dave Phillips in the Will Holshouser Trio. The trio’s third CD, Palace Ghosts and Drunken Hymns, was recorded in Portugal with the late, brilliant pianist Bernardo Sassetti as special guest.