Klezmatics

"If you can hear this music and not see God, you are blind"
Robin Williams

It's easy to chalk up the birth of the Klezmatics to randomness: five people from different musical and geographical backgrounds, all recently arrived in Manhattan, answer an ad in the Village Voice looking for anyone interested in forming a klezmer band. Then again, maybe the future Klezmatics were simply following a historical imperative, as klezmer is the music of the Jewish Diaspora; music that sprung forth between connected strangers in a new land.

Whether the Klezmatics are a product of happenstance or historical imperative, their early success was certainly marked by good fortune. In 1988, they were mainly playing clubs and parties in New York, when they were invited to perform at the first annual Heimatklaenge Festival in Berlin. The band played every night. At the end of the week, the festival's organizers, who had recently formed a label called Piranha, offered them a record deal. The album "Shvaygn = Toyt" was recorded, live, at Radio Free Berlin and just like that, the Klezmatics had a record company, and a future.

Today the Klezmatics are world-reknowned superstars of the klezmer world. Their music is one steeped in Jewish spiritualism and Eastern European tradition while incorporating more provocative themes such as social rights and anti-fundamentalism with eclectic musical influences such as gospel, punk, and Arab, African, and Balkan rhythms. Over the course of twenty years they have released numerous albums of wild, provocative, reflective, and ecstatically danceable music, forever redefining and transcending traditional labels.

They have collaborated with numerous musical luminaries including Arlo Guthrie, Itzhak Perlman, Allen Ginsberg and Pulitzer Prize Winning playwright Tony Kushner. They have reached millions through radio and TV appearances such as on CBS's "Late Night with David Letterman," PBS' "Great Performances," BBC's "Rhythms of the World," BBC's "John Peel Show," various NPR programs ("A Prairie Home Companion" with Garrison Keillor, "New Sounds Live" and "Soundcheck"), CBS's "Nightwatch," FOX's "After Breakfast," "MTV News," and "Sex and the City." They have received numerous awards including a 2006 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album (for "Wonder Wheel: Lyrics by Woody Guthrie."), a New York Jewish Music Award (Best Klezmer Band, 2006), a GLAMA (Gay and Lesbian American Music Award) and the German Critics Award (twice), and have topped the Billboard world music charts on numerous occasions.

Members of the Klezmatics have joined Led Zeppelin, John Zorn, Bob Newirth (Velvet Underground), LL Cool J, Lester Bowie, David Byrne, Uri Caine, Giora Feidmann and David Krakauer for different musial projects. And they have performed in over twenty countries at some of the most storied venues and renowned festivals worldwide, including Central Park Summerstage, Carnegie Hall, Pirineos Sur (Spain), Jazzsomer Graz (Austria), and of course the Heimatklaenge Festival in Berlin, where it all began 20 years ago.

Press Quotes

"The Klezmatics are each and every one breathtaking accomplished and inventive musicians" TAZ

"For us, it was about powerful music with strong political and emotional content. The first time we came to Berlin, we chose songs from the Yiddish socialist tradition. We recorded our first album in the SFB-Studios and Christoph Borkowsky said to us: " you are young musicians from New York and play this music like in the old records. I don't hear any contemporary New York in there. Why don't you put more of yourselves in the music you do?". This comment was a wonderful gift. A label gave us the possibility to do something with our music. We couldn't decline such an opportunity. It was as if a box full of new toys had opened in front of our eyes. Everything goes back to that moment, when someone told us: just do it" Frank London Jazzthetik


"They received the title "The Rolling Stones of Klezmer" and recently a Grammy award, but these don't measure up to their music. The "klezmer-super group" sparked the revival of jewish world music years ago and ever since has insured that klezmer doesn't end up in the folklore pigeonhole. Pop & politics, hiphop & avantgarde, ska & jazz & gospel & on & on. All this ends up in their music. It's a wonderful zimmes (hotpot in yiddish) from the melting pot of New York" Denkmal gegen Gewalt

"These folks are scary good. This is the band that made me sit up and notice that klezmer was changing, becoming something of this day and age. Periodically, as on the stunningly beautiful Romanian Fantasy, or even on the more straightforward bulgars that follow, the band reminds the listener that they know from traditional klez--how to play it, and how to give it life."
Klezmershack

"The Klezmatics music is by turns ecstatic, angry, elegiac, frenetic and exquisite. Every musician in the Klezmatics is a wizard, able to switch gears instantly between the scholary approach of recreating an older traditional sound, and an innovative modern perspective often informed by jazz, rock and avant-garde influences."
Music Hound

"The Klezmatics play soul-stirring Jewish roots music for the 21st Century, concocting Klezmer as only adventurous musicians in New York City would, in arrangements and compositions that combine Jewish identity and mysticism with a contemporary zeitgeist and a post modern aesthetic."
worldmusicportal

Booking

Main Booking
Matt Greenhill
Folklore Productions International
phone: +1 310 451 07 67
mattg@folkloreproductions.com
www.folkloreproductions.com

Benelux Territories
Chazz
Wim Westerveld
PO BOX 1443
6501 BK Nijmegen - Holland
phone: +31(0)24 3226500
fax: +31(0)24 3222658
wim@musicmeeting.nl
chazz.ww@inter.nl.net

Central and Eastern Europe
concerts.pl
Dariusz Startek
phone +48 91 42 37 712
office@concerts.pl
www.concerts.pl

France
RUN Productions
Tel: +33 549 591 010
Fax: +33 549 524 410
eMail: run@runprod.com
web: www.runprod.com

Germany, Austria & German Switzerland
The Red House Agency
Ariane Spiekermann
Wiesenstrasse 55
13357 Berlin
Tel: + 49 (0) 30 66763340
Fax: + 49 (0) 30 66763344
eMail: ariane@redhouse-agency.com
web: www.redhouse-agency.com

Italy
Ballkan World Music Management
Olsi Sulymani
Phone: +39 0721 37 42 81
Mobile: +39 337 65 78 70
eMail: info@musicballkan.com
http://www.musicballkan.com

Spain & Portugal
Conciertos del Norte
Luis Manjeres
manjarres@telecable.es
http://www.conciertosdelnorte.com