Borscht Beat to Release Michael Winograd Plays Tanz! Live in New Yorkk City Dec. 12 to Celebrate Hannukah
“Winograd has mastered the klezmer clarinet vocabulary. It’s not the tunes he plays so much as the way he plays them… it’s hard not to be awed by Winograd’s complete command of klezmer ornamentation, much less the wit with which he deploys it to make the music fit contemporary Brooklyn Jewish culture.”
–DownBeat Magazine
“The leading klezmer clarinetist of his generation.”
–WBGO (Newark, NJ)
“Winograd is one of the younger musicians incorporating contemporary elements… into klezmer.”
–NPR
“Splendid… Very accomplished. Winograd’s lithe and nimble clarinet playing is superlative.”
–Songlines Magazine (UK)
“Winograd’s place in the international klezmer music universe is huge… He fucking blows away the room at klezmer. The level of his virtuosity, deep knowledge, and deep emotion in his playing doesn’t ask, it demands an equal space for klezmer at the table of other so-called ‘folk’ styles of music, such as bluegrass, zydeco, ranchera, or the blues. So a recording of klezmer music under Winograd’s name is a big deal.”
–ArtsFuse
Michael Winograd — the first-call klezmer composer, bandleader, and clarinetist who has performed at Lincoln Center and Madison Square Garden — will release the first-ever full-concert performance of the klezmer masterpiece album Tanz!, which was recorded 70 years ago, in 1955 and released the following year. Michael Winograd Plays Tanz! Live In New York City comes out December 12 on Borscht Beat Records, a label that’s been profiled by Hyperallergic and Bandcamp Daily and boasts some 7.5k followers on TikTok.
Today, Winograd and Borscht Beat shared the single and video for first single “Sam’s Bulgar,” HEAR/SHARE.
Now considered a landmark moment in klezmer because it pushed boundaries with jazz influences, TANZ! (Yiddish translation, ‘Dance!’) saw little success upon its initial release by Epic Records. Brooklyn-born clarinetist/composer Sam Musiker, a veteran of Gene Krupa’s band (including appearing in a Gary Cooper film) who also played with Roy Eldridge, Sarah Vaughan, and Glenn Miller, collaborated with his father-in-law and klezmer virtuoso, clarinetist Dave Tarras for the 1955 sessions. (Tarras actually had his own experience in fusion, performing on an WHN weekly radio show in NYC entitled Yiddish Melodies In Swing.) The dueling clarinets with differing styles in the context of propulsive jazz-infused horn charts mark one of the innovations of TANZ! Sam’s brother Ray, who was born in 1927 and still lives in New York also joined the ensemble, playing tenor saxophone, later teaching a young Winograd.
TANZ! is a quintessential Jewish-American masterpiece, melding Jewish rhythms with the sounds, solos, and horn arrangements of swing. But by the 1950s, its would-be audience was listening to pop music and klezmer was out of fashion among Jewish Americans, who sought to assimilate. Sam Musiker kept gigging, at one point appearing on TV with Jack Paar, but died in 1964.
TANZ! prefigured the later klezmer revival, which readily crossed klezmer with other influences starting in the 1980s which then led to TANZ!’s reissue by Sony Legacy in 2002.
Michael Winograd, first inspired to play Jewish music hearing John Zorn’s Massada, studied with Sam’s brother Ray when he was a teenager. Subsequently, while snowed in at his parents’ house, he transcribed all of ‘Tanz!’ as an exercise. In conversation with Frank London of the Klezmatics, he noted that Musiker and Tarras never performed the material in its own time, let alone in the city of its origin, and that he had an opportunity to do something historic and first performed the full album in sequence at sold-out concerts in 2018. This recording comes from a 2023 performance that had a packed house dancing, and includes London on trumpet.
Winograd, inspired by the styles of both Musiker and Tarras, filters all of this through his own lens as a modern Brooklyn musician responding to an in-person, on-their-feet crowd. The original album was sequenced by Sam Musiker to show a klezmer progression from the past into what klezmer could have become. It kicks off with “Rumania,” a Yiddish theater tune, before moving into songs from the klezmer tradition and a pair of compositions by Tarras. The second of these is “Tango,” emphasizing that this is an album for dancing. From there, it moves to more innovative territory. The album moves into Musiker’s own visionary compositions before coming back to “Rumania,” restating the initial theme of the album with much more jazz phrasing. Musiker’s “Der Neier Doina,” “Der Cholum Fun Yid,” and “Sam Shpeilt in D” extend the tonal framework of klezmer music. ‘Tanz!’ closes with “Papirossen,” another Yiddish theater song popular during the Great Depression, a closing celebration bridging musical eras, featuring Ray Musiker on yet a third clarinet!.
The new recording does the same, with a multi-generational NYC and international band featuring Klezmer veterans Frank London and David Licht (of the GRAMMY award winning Klezmatics,) Paris klezmer clarinet star Marine Goldwaser, Brooklyn musicians Alec Spiegelman (Cuddle Magin, Pokey LaFarge,) bassist Zoe Guigueno (Della Mae, Faux Paws), accordionist Will Holshouser (David Krakauer, Anthony and the Johnsons,) and pianist Carmen Staaf, who made time from her busy touring schedule with the likes of DeeDee Bridgewater. The band is also joined by guest English Horn player Katie Scheele.
Over a decade and a half of albums as a leader and leading collaborator starting with his debut in 2008, Winograd has established a reputation as the premiere klezmer clarinetist of his generation and an adventurous, endlessly curious player and composer.
Michael Winograd Plays Tanz! Live In New York City will be Borsch Beat’s twentieth album since its formation in 2022.
Michael Winograd Tour Dates
December 17 – Somerville, MA – Somerville Armory (Boston Jewish Music Festival)
December 18 – Brooklyn, NY – Center for New Jewish Culture (17 Eastern Parkway)
Michael Winograd Plays Tanz! Live In New York City Track Listing
Rumania (Alexander Olshanetsky)
Tipsy (Traditional)
Roumanian Fantasy (Dave Tarras)
Tango (Dave Tarras)
Tanz! Bulgar (Traditional)
Sam’s Bulgar (Sam Musiker)
Der Yemenite Tanz (Sam Musiker)
Rumania (Alexander Olshanetsky)
Der Neier Doina (Sam Musiker)
Der Cholum Fun Yid (Sam Musiker)
Sam Shpeilt in D (Sam Musiker)
Silkene Pajamas (Traditional)
A Bulgar (Traditional)
Papirossen (Herman Yablokoff)
Michael Winograd Plays Tanz! Live In New York City credits
Michael Winograd – clarinet
Marine Goldwaser – clarinet
Alec Spiegelman – tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, clarinet
Frank London – trumpet
Will Holshouser – accordion
Carmen Staaf – piano
Zoe Guigueno – bass
David Licht – drums
With Katie Scheele – English horn
Produced by Michael Winograd
Recorded live in concert at the Marlene Meyerson JCC in Manhattan, February 16, 2023
Made possible with generous support from:
Ahskenaz Festival, Toronto
Center for Cultural Vibrancy, Baltimore
Center for Traditional Music and Dance, NYC
Weitzman Museum of American Jewish History
Recorded by Christopher McDonald and Jeremy McDonald
Mixed and Mastered by Don Godwin
Live event produced by Michael Winograd & Aaron Bendich
Original artwork by Shifra Whiteman
Album design by Avia Moore
Borscht Beat is owned and operated by Aaron Bendich in loving memory of Max Bendich.
