Rob Young Piano

The first logged use of the word Klezmer was spotted at a committee meeting in Poland in 1595. It is a musical tradition of Eastern Europe. At this time, all-round entertainment and wedding music was providers by players often known as Spielleute or minstrels who sung, played and provided on-request musical numbers and dances.

It overlaps with musical styles as diverse as jazz, Bulgarian, and contemporary art music. The word itself can be split into two different words, ‘klei’, meaning vessel and ‘zimmer’ meaning song. At the start, ensembles were formed of four to eight players with a pair of violins often playing the melody or tune. Many of the musicians were fantastic artists with great reputations. They were also required to have knowledge of the music of local people and also of gypsies and popular traditional dances.

A Klezmer band can mean a lot of different things. Some bands play only with instruments and drums, some perform songs in Yiddish with klezmer instruments playing alongside, some play klezmer music very close to the original recordings, whereas other mix sounds with a range and diversity of influences: folk music, gypsy music or blues. The clarinet came to dominate klezmer music and the instrument was heard regularly at weddings and other communal ceremonies in Eastern Europe. As the 19^th century continued, brass and percussion instruments became more common in klezmer music, often pioneered by returning boys who had served in tsarist military bands.

In the 20^th century the music largely migrated to America when a raft of immigrants travelled overseas to escape persecution in Russia. Many ended up in New York’s Lower East side where they lived in close confines. It is there that the great masters of the music Naftali Brandwein and Dave Tarras popularised the musical form to great acclaim through their Romanian nigunim and Russian freylekhs (dances).

After the second world war, the music largely died out, but it was repopularised in the 1970s with the jazz movement and Giora Feidman. They drew their repertoire from recordings and surviving musicians of American klezmer. Players such as Dave Tarras and Max Epstein became teachers to this new generation of klezmer musicians.

Klezmer is taught widely at Rob Young Music. To book a violin based or piano based consultation on the eastern repertoire, call 07950015269 today!