A multi-instrumentalist, composer, and ethnomusicologist, Dr. Hankus Netsky is chair of New England Conservatory’s Contemporary Improvisation Department, a pioneering multicultural music department now in its 41st year, and is founder and director of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, an internationally renowned Yiddish music ensemble. He has composed extensively for film, theater, and television; collaborated closely with Itzhak Perlman, Robin Williams, Joel Grey, Theodore Bikel, and Robert Brustein; and produced numerous recordings, including ten by the Klezmer Conservatory Band. He was the recipient of the Yosl Mlotek Award and a Forward Fifty Award for his role in the resurgence of traditional Eastern European Jewish ethnic musical culture. From NEC, he was awarded an Outstanding Alumni Award and the Louis Krasner and Lawrence Lesser Awards for Excellence in Teaching. He has also taught at McGill University, Hampshire College, Wesleyan University, and Hebrew College. His essays on Jewish music have been widely published, and Temple University Press released his book, Klezmer, Music and Community in 20th Century Jewish Philadelphia.

Michael Alpert has been a pioneering figure in the renaissance of East European Jewish music and Yiddish culture since the 1970s and is the recipient of a 2015 National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. A native Yiddish speaker and one of the only contemporary singers adept in the traditional style of prewar East European generations, he is also a celebrated innovator in Yiddish song, with original compositions on social and political themes. Mr. Alpert was musical director of the Emmy and Rose D’Or–winning PBS special Itzhak Perlman: In the Fiddler’s House, and is featured in film and broadcast media worldwide. An important link to Old World Jewish musicians, he has documented Jewish music and dance throughout the globe, is a leading teacher and scholar of the Yiddish cultural arts, and has played a central role in the trans- mission of Ashkenazic music and dance to younger generations. A longtime research associate of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, he is currently a Senior Research Fellow at New York City’s Center for Traditional Music and Dance, and has taught at Oxford, Columbia, Indiana University, and the New England Conservatory.

Judy Bressler is a founding member of the Klezmer Conservatory Band and is the featured vocalist on all 10 of their CDs. A third generation Yiddish performer, she can be seen in the PBS documentary A Jumpin’ Night In The Garden Of Eden and was featured with Joel Grey in Borscht Capades ’94. Being part of In the Fiddler’s House since 1996, she has performed at Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and Boston’s Symphony Hall.

Lorin Sklamberg is a founding member of the Grammy Award–winning Yiddish American roots band the Klezmatics. His composition “Happy Joyous Hanukkah,” with lyrics by Woody Guthrie, has been published in choral arrangements by Hal Leonard. He can be heard on innumerable recordings and live shows, solo and in collaboration with such diverse artists as Jane Siberry, Odetta, Chava Alberstein, Emmylou Harris, Tracy Grammer, Neil Sedaka, Natalie Merchant, and Tony Kushner. He has written and performed for film, dance, stage, and circus, and has produced a number of recordings of world and theater music. Projects include Saints and Tzadiks with Susan McKeown; the score for Erik Anjou’s documentary Deli Man; the Semer Ensemble, a celebration of Jewish recordings made in Berlin 1933–38; the award-winning Yiddish Bavarian Alpen Klezmer with Andrea Pancur and Ilya Shneyveys; Sklamberg and the Shepherds featuring traditional and original Yiddish, Russian, and South Mediterranean music; and composer Jocelyn Pook’s Drawing Life, a multimedia song cycle commissioned by the Jewish Music Institute of London. By day, Mr. Sklamberg serves as sound archivist of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Frank London is a Grammy Award–winning trumpeter and composer, a member of the Klezmatics, and leader of the Hungarian New York band Glass House Orchestra, the bhangra funk group Sharabi (with Deep Singh), and his Shekhinah Big Band. He has performed and recorded with John Zorn, Pink Floyd, Mel Tormé, Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, LaMonte Young, They Might Be Giants, David Byrne, and is featured on more than 400 CDs. Mr. London composed a Yiddish-Cuban opera, Hatuey: Memory of Fire, with Elise Thoron, and explored klezmer and cantorial music with Cantor Yaakov Lemmer and clarinetist Michael Winograd. His other projects include the folk opera A Night In The Old Marketplace and the multimedia work Salomé, Woman of Valor.

Born into a family with a long line of cantors, composers, and both classical and vaudeville musicians, Andy Statman grew up in Queens. His early musical memories include 1950s rock and roll, big band jazz, and classical music; family get-togethers where the celebrants danced to klezmer melodies and Tin Pan Alley and Broadway tunes; and the rabbi in his afternoon religious school who sang Hasidic songs. Mr. Statman started playing bluegrass at the age of 12 and was soon performing with local bands at colleges, on radio, in clubs, and in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. At 17, after hearing avant-garde jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler, he began studying saxophone. He became a protégé of legendary klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras. Mr. Statman has appeared on more than 100 recordings. He has recorded and toured with the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Dr. John, Ricky Skaggs, Béla Fleck, David Grisman, and Itzhak Perlman, among others. A Grammy Award nominee and recipient of an NEA Fellowship and New York State Council on the Arts grants, Mr. Statman has performed at Carnegie Hall, Town Hall, and Lincoln Center. In 2012 he received the National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

A leading voice in the world of klezmer music and Yiddish song for more than thirty years, the Klezmer Conservatory Band (KCB) continues to thrill audiences all over the world. With a repertory ranging from Yiddish standards to rousing dance medleys, the KCB musicians have served as important ambassadors in promoting the universal appeal of Jewish music. Over the years the band has appeared at dozens of international music festivals in major venues across the US, Europe, and Australia, and on ten international broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion. KCB provided the musical accompaniment for The Fool and the Flying Ship, a 1991 video featuring Robin Williams; played an integral role in Joel Grey’s Borscht Capades ’94; and performed the music for the American Repertory Theatre production, Shlemiel the First. Since the late 1990s, Itzhak Perlman has featured KCB in his CD, video, and touring project, In the Fiddler’s House, including performances at Wolf Trap, Great Woods, Radio City Music Hall, the Ravinia Festival, the Saratoga Music Festival, Moscow’s Barvikha Concert Hall, the Mizner Park Amphitheatre in Boca Raton, FL, and the Mann Music Center (Philadelphia). In December 2002, the KCB performed a concert of orchestral arrangements of klezmer and Yiddish music with the Atlanta Symphony. In 1988, Bill T. Jones choreographed a piece based on music from their CD, A Jumpin’ Night in the Garden of Eden, for the Boston Ballet. Recently, the band re-joined Mr. Perlman as an integral part of his cantorial/Hassidic/klezmer/Yiddish folk music project, Eternal Echoes. The band was also featured in Rejoice!, a full-length PBS Great Performances music special.

(January 2019)