MILAN MILANO ITALY | VIA MONTENAPOLEONE PEOPLE & EVENTS | PEOPLE & EVENTS IN VIA MONTENAPOLEONE

It was truly a welcome return to Milan after a long absence, that of the Klezmatics, the most celebrated and innovative klezmer music group, the idiom of the traditional music of the Jewish festivals of Eastern Europe.
Indeed this group of musicians from the Lower East Side of New York has contributed to introducing a music - which until twenty years ago was relegated to the ceremonies and folk festivals of those neighbourhoods - to an international audience, creators therefore of a new klezmer music mixing pop and classical avant-garde, folk, rock, jazz and heavy metal.
Ever since their beginnings in 1986, the Klezmatics – who won a Grammy Award with the album “Wonder Wheel” in 2006 (lyrics by Woody Guthrie) – have played to sell-out crowds in their shows in North and South America and throughout Europe, including appearances at many festivals; Peter Gabriel’s Womad, the Montreal Jazz festival, the Philadelphia Folk festival or the Klezmer in Safed, Israel. They have reached the homes of millions of TV viewers via the channels CBS, BBC and MTV, and their projects include collaborations as varied as they are creative: from violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman to Israeli singer Chava Alberstein, poet Allen Ginsberg, actor Robin Williams, from the artists of the downtown New York scene Elliot Sharp, John Zorn and Marc Ribot, ex-Led Zeppelin members Robert Plant and Jimmy Page and the members of the Flying Karamazov Brothers.
The Klezmatics (Matt Darriau - kaval, clarinet and alto saxophone; Lisa Gutkin – violin and vocals; Frank London – trumpet and keyboards; Paul Morrissett – bass and cimbalom; Lorin Sklamberg - vocals, accordion, guitar and piano and Richie Barshay - drums) are for their fans the symbol of that klezmer who fuses the Ashkenazim traditions with the avant-garde jazz influences most typical of the new continent. In the sell-out show at the Teatro degli Arcimboldi, they performed their interpretation of celebrated Yiddish songs featuring the verses of some of the greatest Yiddish poets of the XX century.
For twenty years they have performed a mixture of Yiddish tradition, jazz and pop, folk and rock. Today the group of Frank London, trumpet player and leader of the group, is the expression of a philosophy which successfully integrates the struggle for human rights with Jewish spiritualism thanks to musical ideas which – with its repertoire which embraces an interior vibration, perhaps a faith - try to break through historical, cultural and social barriers with the «Klezmatics style».

credits:.
TEATRO degli ARCIMBOLDI
viale dell'Innovazione, 20
20126 Milano
tel:. +39 02.641142200

THE KLEZMATICS