In mid-January, Esther Shapera was surprised and delighted to discover that a concert of Eastern European klezmer music, thought lost for nearly a century, would be performed at Beth El Phoenix by a local klezmer band and a New York expert in klezmer music.
She was perusing her copy of Jewish News when she was stopped short by a headline that read, “Klezmer concert at Beth El isn’t your mother’s klezmer music, but it might be your great-grandmother’s.” The article beneath was about “Trampled Manuscripts: The Lost Klezmer Music of the An-Ski Expeditions,’’ and described the backstory of the discovery of the Kiselgof-Makonovetsky archive, filled with century-old songs and kept inside the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine and out of public view.
She read that Phoenix’s Little Chef Klezmer Band would share the stage with Christina Crowder, the New York Klezmer Institute’s co-founder and executive director. She found the contact information for the Institute and reached out with a possible story — not to mention a folder full of faded and mostly out-of-print Jewish music — of her own.
To read the full story in Jewish News, click here.
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