Peter Rushefsky

Over the past three months, the New York klezmer scene lost two leading old-time clarinetists/band leaders. Marty Levitt and Rudy Tepel were both active during a period when klezmer music declined in popularity amongst the mainstream American Jewish community, though demand grew within Hasidic circles. I interviewed Professor Joel Rubin of the University of Virginia, an ethnomusicologist and leading klezmer clarinetist …

Remembering Rudy Tepel and Marty Levitt: Interview with Professor Joel Rubin, University of Virginia Read More »

As a fellow dulcimer player, I’ve been aware of Brian Cherwick for many years. He’s a multi-instrumentalist and one of the leading researchers and practitioners of the tsymbaly (hammered dulcimer) tradition of the Canadian-Ukrainian immigrants who settled the prairies of Western Canada. Holding a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology/folklore studies, Brian is used to playing the role of the ethnographer, so …

Brian Cherwick: Dulcimer on the Prairie Read More »

It was a beautiful spring day in Chinatown when I stopped by the Mencius Society to talk with Xiao Xiannian, a virtuoso of the Chinese hammered dulcimer known as yangqin. Housed in a building on Grand St. near its intersection with Delancey, the Mencius Society (also known as the AiCenter, and formerly the Wossing Center) provides …

Xiao Xiannian: New Sounds for Chinese Strings Read More »

Julian Kytasty is perhaps North America’s leading exponent of the Ukrainian bandura. The bandura is a harp-like lute, and for hundreds of years bards known as “kobzars” (another name for bandura is “kobza”) traveled the towns and villages of central and eastern Ukraine earning a living playing the instrument while singing dumy (epic songs), religious …

Kobzar of the East Village: Julian Kytasty Read More »

Back in 1978 when Zev Feldman helped the Center for Traditional Music and Dance (then known as the Balkan Arts Center) present octogenarian clarinetist Dave Tarras for a landmark series of concerts and a studio recording, he needed to find a way to describe Tarras’s music for a grant application.  This was the first project …

Michael Alpert and Zev Feldman: Saving Yiddish Dance Read More »