315 Columbia Street Brooklyn, New York 11231 phone 718.395.3214
Klezmer Instrumental Music Workshop 6:30pm-8:00 $25 per class, Concerts & Dance Parties begin at 8:30pm – $15 Jam Session follows Concert 10-11:00ish
Full night pass – $35 (includes Workshop, Concert & Jam Session)
Photo by David Kaufman
Pete Rushefsky is a leading revivalist of the tsimbl, and one of a handful of contemporary klezmer musicians to use field and archival research in recreating a performance style for the instrument. He is currently touring with violinist Itzhak Perlman in a program/recording titled “Eternal Echoes: Songs and Dances for the Soul,” featuring the leading cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot, as well as klezmer revival legends Hankus Netsky and the Klezmer Conservatory Band. He has performed at the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and featured on National Public Radio’s Prairie Home Companion and All Things Considered as well as PBS’s nationally-televised Great Performances. Rushefsky additionally serves as Executive Director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York City, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving and nurturing the performing arts traditions of the city’s immigrant communities. A protégé of tsimblists Stuart Brotman, Sam Chianis, Walter Zev Feldman, Alex Fedoriouk and Josh Horowitz, Rushefsky regularly performs and records with many of the leading contemporary performers of Yiddish music, including clarinetists Naum Goldenshteyn, Franzi Seehausen, Joel Rubin and Michael Winograd, violinists Steven Greenman, Lisa Gutkin, Keryn Kleiman, Adam Moss, Elie Rosenblatt, Jake Shulman-Ment, Alicia Svigals, flutists Adrianne Greenbaum and Madeline Solomon and vocalists Michael Alpert, Ethel Raim and Rebecca Kaplan. A popular instructor at camps internationally such as KlezKamp, KlezKanada and Yiddish Summer Weimar, Rushefsky is also the author of a pioneering instructional book on adapting the American 5-string banjo for klezmer. He is a well-known lecturer on klezmer and other traditional musics and has a number of published articles to his credit.
Photo by David Kaufman