Vulfpeck Collaborator Michael Winograd to Release New Twist on the Klezmer Classic ‘Tanz!’

Michael Winograd, the klezmer composer, bandleader and clarinetist who performed at New York’s Madison Square Garden with Vulfpeck, will release the first-ever full-concert reinterpretation of the klezmer classic Tanz! on December 12 via Borscht Beat Records. Michael Winograd Plays Tanz! Live In New York City features a multi-generational New York and international band boasting Klezmer veterans Frank London and David Licht (of the 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 recently toured with DeeDee Bridgewater. The band is also joined by guest English Horn player Katie Scheele. The set was recorded live at the Marlene Meyerson JCC in Manhattan on Feb. 16, 2023.”  

The original Tanz! was recorded 70 years ago, in 1955, and released the following year. As Winograd’s team explains, “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. 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!.” 

Winograd will support the release with appearances at Somerville, MA ‘s Somerville Armory on December 17 as part of the Boston Jewish Music Festival and Brooklyn, NY’s Center for New Jewish Culture on December 18. 

Here’s a look at the track listing for Michael Winograd Plays Tanz! Live In New York City   

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)