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The Klezmatics
The Klezmatics formed in New York's East Village in 1986 and won the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album for "Wonder Wheel: Lyrics by Woody Guthrie," built around 12 previously unrecorded Guthrie lyrics the band set to new klezmer-rooted music — making them the only klezmer band ever to win a Grammy. Guthrie's estate had been sitting on notebooks full of unused lyrics, some touching on Jewish and Hanukkah themes from his years living in a Coney Island building with many Jewish neighbors, and The Klezmatics' project turned a selection of them into a genuine cross-genre collaboration decades after Guthrie's death. Across nearly four decades together, the band has released 13 albums blending traditional Yiddish material with jazz, gospel, punk, classical, Latin, and Balkan influences, and topped the Billboard World Music Chart along the way. Their combination of the genre's only Grammy Award and their nearly 40-year run blending klezmer with everything from punk to gospel has made The Klezmatics the most significant band of the klezmer revival movement.
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Brave Old World
Brave Old World formed in 1989 with members drawn from California, Chicago, New York, and Berlin, an unusually international lineup for a klezmer band, originally featuring clarinetist Joel Rubin, drummer Ben Bazyler, multi-instrumentalist Stu Brotman (a former member of 1960s rock band Kaleidoscope and a sideman for Canned Heat), keyboardist Alan Bern, and violinist Michael Alpert. Rubin was later replaced by Kurt Bjorling, musical director of the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble since 1984, bringing another deeply credentialed klezmer specialist into the lineup. The Washington Post called Brave Old World "the revival's first supergroup," noting that "every player is a virtuoso," and the band won first prize at the 1992 International Klezmer Festival in Safed, Israel, a significant early validation from within the genre's own community. Their combination of their genuinely international, virtuoso-level lineup and their 1992 Safed festival win has made Brave Old World one of the most artistically respected bands in the klezmer revival.
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