Yale Hosts College Klezmer Fest

Student bands from Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Brown and the New England Conservatory will perform an afternoon of klezmer music beginning at 2 p.m., February 24, at Toad’s Place, 200 York Street.

Tickets to the fourth annual Klezmerpalooza festival are $10 for non-students, and free for students. In addition to the concert, there will be a master class in klezmer performance at 10 a.m. in the Branford College Common Room, 74 High Street, free and open to the public, led by a pioneer in the klezmer revival, Henry Sapoznik.

Klezmer is a lively form of Jewish instrumental music with its origins in Eastern European folk traditions and on the Yiddish stage. Over the past 30 years, it has experienced a renaissance in the United States, inspiring dozens of new bands and drawing huge crowds of enthusiasts.

This year’s Klezmerpalooza festival brings the event back home to Yale. Yale alumnus Jeffrey Perlman started the festival back in 1999, in order to bring together the collegiate klezmer community and to increase awareness of the genre.

Sapoznik, who will lead the master class, is a renowned banjo performer, teacher and producer. He has written extensively on klezmer music since the 1970s, and is currently the director and co-founder of Living Traditions Inc., a non-profit organization that seeks to preserve Yiddish culture.

For more information, contact Joshua Wolf at 203-436-0223 or joshua.wolf@yale.edu. Visit the Klezmerpalooza website at www.yale.edu/klezmer.