Recordings, instruments,
music, orgs
Stores and Equipment:
Music book authors/sources:
Organizations and Associations:
Stores and Equipment Vendors
Best Ballroom Shoes
Best Ballroom Shoes offers a variety of stocked dance shoes along with a custom shoe service which allows you to pick a shoe style, Color(s), heel tyle and height and your size. Our custom shoes are very popular for Weddings, Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah Celebrations. We offer outstanding customer support and our staff will help you pick and match shoe styles and colors that will make your special occasion perfect right down to your toes! We provide comfortable, affordable custom made dance shoes which are fashionable, comfortable, and can be made in hundreds of colors and styles. You can dance all night without sore feet and blisters! Tel: (585)259-9680. Web: www.bestballroomshoes.com.
Dusty Strings
Builds hammered dulcimers and folk harps, and also operates a full service acoustic music store with rentals, repairs, classes and workshops, books, videos, CDs, and lots of acoustic/folk instruments. 3406 Fremont Ave. N. Seattle, WA 98103. Tel: 206-634-1662. Web: www.dustystrings.com. (Recommended by Seattle klezmer and balkan violin veteran Sandra Layman.)
House of Musical Traditions
House of Musical Traditions, 7040 Carroll Ave Takoma Park, MD 20912. Tel: 301-270-9090, US toll free: 800-540-3794 / fax 301-270-3010. For list of Klezmer books, tapes and CD's available by mail order from the House of Musical Traditions, see www.hmtrad.com/. [Note: Wendy Morrison has installed a lot of nifty surprises that you will find as you explore the website--good to visit just for the fun of exploring. ari]. (Wendy Morrison)
James Jones Instruments
I build a whole range of acoustic instruments including hammered dulcimers, harps, bouzoukis, zithers, thumb pianos, bowed psalteries, Appalachian dulcimers, slit drums, and the occasional guitar. For those interested in klezmer, I now offer a 3 different size Tsimbls; a 13/12, a 16/16 and a 18/17. I also offer a 4 octave plus Linear Chromatic which offers a different take on full chromaticism in a hammered dulcimer. Visit my web site at www.jamesjonesinstruments.com to see everything, jamesjonesinstruments.com/hammereddulcimer/studenttsimbl.html to check out my Tsimbls and jamesjonesinstruments.com/hammereddulcimer/linearchromatic.html for information on my Linear Chromatics. Contact me if you have any questions. James Jones Instruments, 1384 Coltons Mill Rd, Bedford, VA 24523. Tel: (540) 586-6319.
Lark in the Morning
Lark In The Morning is well known for providing World Musical Instruments from many cultures, Books, Recordings and Videos. Check out their WWW catalog at: larkinthemorning.com/.
www.OySongs.com
www.oySongs.com, the world's first progressive-Jewish music download site, has launched featuring a wide variety of Jewish musical artists. With deep levels of music categorization and artist information, oySongs boasts a huge mp3-format catalog of songs and albums. oySongs also offers interactive Jewish sheet music, enabling a user to change the key of a song or to hear it played back, while reviewing the score on their screen. Visit www.oySongs.com for complete music listings, samples, biographical info, pictures, news, reviews and other special oySongs-only content! Tel: 918.299.4112 / Fax: 918.299.4113. Web: www.oySongs.com. (Joe Eglash)
Simcha Sales Inc. (Sal Kluger)
Sal Kluger (Simcha Sales Inc.) sells out of print jewish music including 100's of jewish Lp's and 78's. No listing is available. Stop by his garage and start looking. Tel: (732) 566-7538. Fax: (732) 566-6997 . 11 Imbrook Lane, Aberdeen, New Jersey 07747.
Spiritrax
Spiritrax.com is an online resource for downloadable backing tracks (sing-alongs) of religious music. We have a great library of professional-quality sing-along tracks of Jewish songs and prayers, many in a klezmer style. We cross religious boundaries, and include not only Jewish songs but also Christian, Islamic, and secular holiday songs. Our arrangements are used in churches and synagogues, religious schools and camps, and homes across the country. Web: www.spiritrax.com. (Ben Messer)
Workmen's Circle
Offering a wide variety of Yiddish resources, Workmen's Circle also has a wide collection of the best Yiddish song books around. The website is at www.circle.org
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Music book authors/sources
"Klezmer Repertoire" by Mike Curtis
Mike Curtis has put together a whole series of transcriptions for violin/flute, clarinet, sax, and even several trios and quartets. For a complete catalog, contact Alfred Music.
The music of Daniel Hoffman
35 songs and klezmer pieces by the late Daniel Hoffman, z"l. Available in both print and digital editions: www.ortav.com. Customers living in Israel should order from our Israeli website, www.ortav.co.il
The Joy of Klez, from the Repertoire of the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band, 2001
This is a set of 10 songs, arranged by the fine folks at Maxwell Street Klezmer Band, orig. pub by Tara Publications, this is now available directly from the band at www.klezmerband.com/store. You can get whichever parts you want: the basic score, the bass/trombone parts, the piano/violin/flute parts, or the clarinet/sax/trumpet parts. These books are ideal for anyone starting a band: Junior Klezmer Orchestras, synagogue klezmer bands, or even starting out with some friends and some enthusiasm--all are going to benefit from these books. The "score," the main fake book, also comes with a CD so you can hear how the arrangements sound. The tunes were originally recorded in the first golden age of American klezmer music, 1910-1940. As one would expect from books published by Tara, the printing and typography are clear and impeccable.
Or-Tav: Israeli Chassidic Music Collections
Or-Tav has published collections of the songs of the Chassidic festivals since it was founded in 1967. We still have the pamphlets available for the years 1970, 1972-1977, 1981, and 1984. We also published collections of songs from the Oriental song festivals from the years 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975. Many of these songs were also written to traditional and liturgical texts. And of course, most years of the Israel Song Festival (later Pre-Eurovision) are still available. Each pamphlet is $3 USA plus postage. We have a publication that has been out about a year and a half and is selling quite well: Klezmer Tunes by Daniel Galay. The book contains 18 original klezmer melodies for violin or clarinet and piano. There is also a version for accompaniment by string orchestra. We are now distributed in North America by Southern Music Company. The Klezmer Tunes are also available for sale on Tara's site. Yosef Zucker, General Manager,
Or-Tav Music Publications,
P.O. Box 1126, Kfar Sava 44110 ISRAEL.
Tel./Fax. +972-9-767-9869
Our catalog is now available in electronic form. Web: www.ortav.com. Israeli customers should use: www.ortav.co.il/Mazltov!: Jewish-American Wedding Music from the Repertoire of Dave Tarras for Clarinet (Bb or C) or other Melodic Instruments
Revised and edited by Joel Rubin. Schott (Mainz/London/Madrid/New York/Paris/Tokyo/Toronto) ISMN M-001-12146-0
Mazltov! contains detailed melodic transcriptions (with chords) from the acclaimed CD by Joel Rubin with the Epstein Brothers Orchestra (recipients of the 1998 National Heritage Fellowship): "Zeydes un Eyniklekh" (Grandfathers and Grandsons). Jewish-American Wedding Music from the Repertoire of Dave Tarras" (Schott Wergo SM 1610-2). Also included in the publication is the first available detailed essay on ornamentation and other aspects of klezmer performance style (in English and German). While originally conceived for clarinet, the pieces can be adapted for any melody instrument and arranged for any instrumental combination. Mazltov! provides the best possible introduction to the music of the "King of Klezmer", Dave Tarras (1897-1989).Essentials of Klezmer Banjo
My book of 27 klezmer tunes arranged for bluegrass banjo, "The Essentials of Klezmer 5-String Banjo" is available as a PDF download from the Klezmershack.
Sephardic Songbook
The Sephardic Songbook, Edition Peters, 2001 ISBN 3-87626-222-4, edited by Aron Saltiel, intro by Josh Horowitz.
The Sephardic Songbook has just been released by the classical music publisher, Peters Edition, Frankfurt. It is a collection of 51 Judeo-Spanish tunes from Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece and Bosnia, collected and edited by Aron Saltiel, one of the leading exponents of the Sephardic music community and a native speaker of Ladino, with transcriptions and an extensive introduction by Josh Horowitz. Further information and reviews are available.
Kale Bazetsns and Doinas
Kale Bazetsns and Doinas
Transcribed and edited by
Cookie Segelstein and Joshua Horowitz, 2005Thirteen doinas and seventeen kale bazetsns transcribed and edited by Cookie Segelstein and Joshua Horowitz, most for the first time in print. From well-known Jewish kale bazetsns to Romanian doinas taken from field recordings, this collection includes a thorough introduction by Horowitz, and a discography of sources.
$30 USD
Please add: $3.50 for First Class shipping in the US
Email for international shipping cost.
There is some free music listed in Helen Winkler's Jewish music and Jewish dance bibliography from yizkir bikher—memorial books written after the Holocaust to commemorate communities that were destroyed, as available on the web.
Organizations and Associations
The American Society for Jewish Music
The ASJM traces its roots back to the Society for Jewish Folk Music of St. Petersburg, Russia (1908-18). After the Bolshevik Revolution, members of the group published their compositions under the imprint of JUWAL, Publication Society for Jewish Music (later called JIBNEH) with offices in Tel Aviv and Berlin. Among these members were three composer-musicologists, Joseph Achron, Solomon Rosowsky and Lazare Saminsky, who emigrated to the United States, where, along with Abraham W. Binder and others, they founded Mailamm (Makhon Eretz Yisraeli L'-Mada'ey ha-Musika), an organization with chapters in several American cities (1932-39). From 1939 to 1962, this was refashioned by A.W. Binder as the Jewish Music Forum, which in turn became the Jewish Liturgical Society of America (1963-74). In 1974, the latter group was reorganized as the American Society for Jewish Music, Inc., under the direction of its first president, Albert Weisser. Tel: 212-294-8328. Web: www.jewishmusic-asjm.org. (Rabbi Henry D. Michelman)
The Associazione Musica Klezmer,
in Anocna, Italy, has been organizing an annual, international festival of klezmer music since 1996.
The Felicja Blumental Music Center & Library
is located at 26 Bialik St. in Tel-Aviv. Our hours are: Sun. Tues.: 9 - 14. Mon. Wed. Thurs.: 12 - 19. We were previously known as the A.M.L.I. (Americans for a Music Library in Israel) - Central Music Library. The emphasis is on classical music, but of course we have a lot of Israeli music, song books, chazzanut, yiddish, etc. We have about 18,000 records, just over 2000 cds and 130 video cassettes. (New recordings always welcome!). (Ryna Kedar, Head, Acquisitions & Cataloging Division, The Felicja Blumental Music Center & Library Tel-Aviv, Israel).
AMJ--Friends of Jewish Music (Geneva, Switzerland)
Following the Festival of Jewish and Israeli Music held in September 1995 as part of the celebrations organized for the Year of Diversity by the City of Geneva (Switzerland), a group of musicians and music lovers of various backgrounds got together and, in 1996, founded The Friends of Jewish Music, a non-profit Association. The Association's objective is to promote the wealth and breadth of Jewish music and to share this integral part of the Jewish people's daily life with a larger audience, and thus, through the music, to foster the discovery of a whole civilization. In pursuance of its mission to promote knowledge about Jewish musical culture, the Association will organize concerts, lectures and debates, exhibits and music workshops - possibly in cooperation with other organizations. The annual membership fee is CHF 50.- for an individual and CHF 80.- for a couple. For additional information please contact: Catherine Tacchini-Demolis: Phone: +41/22/733.29.57 / Fax: +41/22/734.71.93, or Dann-Olivier Alfandary: Phone: +41/22/320.86.28 / Fax: +41/22/343.43.31.
Jewish Music Archives, Chicago Public Library
The Archives receives deposit of original recordings at Jewish festivals at various Klezkamps (New York, New Jersey, Kiev, St.Petersburg, London, Cambridge, Toronto), and individual performances in Bristol, England, Chicago, London and Paris. There are also interviews of individual performers, and of teaching sessions at festivals. Performers and/or bands that would like to be added to the Archives may contact Cyril Robinson at 618-549-0028 / Fax: 618-453-6377. Performers wishing an interview should send me a CD, if they have one (520 N. Michaels St., Carbondale, IL 62901) I will play their CD on my radio show, Cyril's Cabaret, 9l.1 FM WDBX. I will send them a copy of the broadcast. Once the interview is deposited with the library, and processed, they will receive a CD copy of the interview. Interviews will be by telephone. Web: www.chipublib.org/008subject/001artmusic/jewish/jewishmain.html
Jewish Music Institute, SOAS, London University
Jewish music came of age in Britain on March 30 2000 when the Jewish Music Institute was inaugurated at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. It was, as Professor Alexander Goehr, emeritus professor of music at Cambridge, told an audience of more than 250 academics, musicians, benefactors, communal leaders and members of the music-loving public, that Jewish music was now a recognised and respected academic discipline. The Jewish Music Institute is dedicated to the celebration, preservation and development of the living heritage of Jewish music for the benefit if all. It has three strands of activity: Education, performance and information. Education includes a full time lectureship in Jewish music at SOAS with ug and pg programmes and triennial conferences. Performance programme includes the London International Jewish Music Festival and other concerts, commissioning new works and premieres. Information includes setting up a Library and Archive, a cataloguing system, publishing proceedings and recordings. Web: www.jmi.org.uk.
KlezCalifornia, Lagunitis, California
A celebration of Klezmer Music, Yiddish Language, Dance, Theatre and Folk Arts. A week in San Francisco infused with Yiddishkayt! Four class periods each day, followed by evening programs that include concerts by renowned musicians, singing, dancing, and student performances. Teen program, children's program and special workshops ... all focused on exploring the myriad aspects of klezmer music and Yiddish culture. The program will include classes for both musicians and non musicians, including all levels of instrumental and vocal Klezmer Music. Tel: (415) 789-7679. Mailing Address: KlezCalifornia, P.O. Box 36 Lagunitas, CA 94938. Web: www.klezcalifornia.org.
KlezKanada, Quebec, Canada
In just 5 years KlezKanada has become a major international Yiddish/Jewish Festival. It's prime goal is to bring together, in a rural setting, many of the most talented and creative artists, musicians and scholars and invite the interested public in to experience over a 5 day period the exhilaration and intellectual joy of participation and learning. The program includes many scheduled discussions, panels, symposia, lectures and concerts for all registrants while many workshops are scheduled, including instrumental, small and large ensembles, voice and theatre for those interested in perfecting their respective performance. A unique feature is the awarding of 50 youth scholarships to promising young musicians and artists. Contact: Tel: (514) 345-2610 loc. 3249 / Fax: (514) 735-2175. Or write to: KIezKanada 2000, c/o Bronfman Jewish Educational Centre, 1 Carré Cummings Square, Montreal, Quebec, H3W 1M6, Canada. Web: www.klezkanada.com.
la Maison de la Culture Yiddish / Paris Yiddish Center
The Paris Yiddish Center is at 18, passage Saint-Pierre Amelot in the 11th district of Paris (Subway station : Oberkampf). You can download its program (language courses, lectures, cultural workshops,...) on our website : www.yiddishweb.com.
Yiddish Book Center
The NYBC is an incredible source of Yiddish materials of all sorts, including digital reprints and an amazing sheet music collection. They also host regular concerts of new and old Yiddish music. The building is modeled on a wooden Ashkenazic synagogue as once existed in Poland, and is sited on the campus of Hampshire College. The National Yiddish Book Center, Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Building, 1021 West Street, Amherst, MA 01002. Tel: 413-256-4900. Fax: 413-256-4700. Web: www.yiddishbookcenter.org/.
Yiddish New York
Join us in December for Yiddish New York! Be part of an amazing intergenerational community, local and international. Programs for young, old and everyone in between! yiddishnewyork.com
Yiddish Summer Weimar
YSW is a uniquely creative, intercultural community in which people of all ages and backgrounds are welcome. The week-long workshops that make up the backbone of YSW are taught by international, cutting-edge artists and scholars in an atmosphere that encourages learning, discussion, creativity, individuality and community. yiddishsummer.eu/
If you have a klez story to tell, comments, reviews to add, or just want to let people know about your band, or have something else to say that I haven't already mentioned (and especially about bad links or other mistakes)— contact @klezmershack.bsky.social I'll get it all online as I have time. It's a pleasure!
