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An ahead-of-its-time klezmer album will be performed live for the first time
(New York Jewish Week) — In 1955, a group of musicians gathered in a Manhattan recording studio and committed to tape 16 tunes. When the LP, “Tanz,” was released the following year, it barely made a splash.
Over the years, however, the recording would gain a reputation as a landmark klezmer album, years before the klezmer revival of the 1970s and ’80s. Recorded by the klezmer virtuoso Dave Tarras and a handful of respected New York jazz players, including brothers Sam and Ray Musiker, the record was a groundbreaking mix of the traditional Eastern European Jewish dance music and a jazz and big band sound.
And now, nearly seven decades later, the entire album will be performed before a live audience for the first time ever. On Thursday, Brooklyn-based clarinetist Michael Winograd will lead a band of klezmer all-stars as they play the music from “Tanz” (Yiddish for “dance”) at the Marlene Meyerson JCC on the Upper West Side.
“One of the things that I love about his compositions on ‘Tanz,’ is that they feel like they are both inside and outside the klezmer box,” Winograd told the New York Jewish Week. “They are so clearly klezmer, but they’re also pushing the boundaries so much and I think that came from his work as a jazz musician.”
Winograd completed the herculean task of transcribing all the instrumental parts of the album several years ago. He said that he originally transcribed “Tanz” as a technical exercise and initially had no plans to record or perform the material. But trumpeter Frank London of The Klezmatics convinced him to reconsider, Winograd said.
“Frank told me, ‘You have the music, you might as well perform it. It would be amazing,’” Winograd recalled.
In December 2018, he performed some of the tracks with two different klezmer bands in Berlin and New York. The upcoming JCC performance, however, is the debut performance of the album in full. Winograd is working with Aaron Bendich from the Borscht Beat record label and hopes to release a film of the JCC concert, which is co-presented by the Ashkenaz Festival, the Center for Cultural Vibrancy, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance and the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History.
The driving force behind “Tanz” was the late Sam Musiker, a fourth-generation klezmer musician born in New York. He and his younger brother, Ray, also a member of the “Tanz” ensemble, performed klezmer extensively starting as young musicians. On the album cover, the Musiker brothers got second billing to Sam Musiker’s father-in-law, the clarinetist Dave Tarras, a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine and the undisputed king of klezmer at the time.
Also playing on the album were drummer Irving Gratz, Tarras’s regular drummer; pianist Moe Wechsler, a Juilliard-trained musician who played in the big bands of Benny Goodman and Louis Prima; accordion player Seymour Megenheimer, a pianist who later became known as Sy Mann and is credited with recording “Switched-On Santa,” the first Christmas album to feature a Moog synthesizer; Mack Shopnick, a swing-era jazz bassist who was later active in the American Federation of Musicians union; and trumpeter Melvin Soloman, who played on a couple of Sarah Vaughan albums.
The musicians gathered at the former church that became Columbia Records’ 30th Street Studio to make the record. The studio opened after World War II and, until it closed in 1981, it was graced by some of the greatest musical talent of the 20th century, including Vladimir Horowitz, Dizzy Gillespie and Bob Dylan. Rehearsal and recording took place over two days, according to Ray Musiker, who had to take off a couple of days from his regular gig: teaching music at James Madison High School in Brooklyn.
Ray Musiker is the only surviving member of the original band, and earlier this month Winograd interviewed the 96-year-old at his home on Long Island, where they discussed how the record flopped when it was released by Epic Records in 1956. “It didn’t make an impact — there were too many things going on in the world of pop music,” Musiker told Winograd. “Judaism was Americanizing, the whole thrust was to assimilate. Klezmer music started to dwindle. They’re not living in the shtetl and they don’t want to hear shtetl music. It died out like [the Yiddish theater on] Second Avenue died out.”
And yet, in recent years, “Tanz” has been reexamined and reappraised. According to Uri Schreter, a PhD student at Harvard who studies Jewish music during the postwar period, “Tanz” is one of the most important klezmer recordings of the latter half of the 20th century. With its brass-heavy big band arrangements, “Tanz” was klezmer’s “very significant and very deep step into the world of American popular music, specifically jazz and swing,” he told the New York Jewish Week.
“Tanz” was also unique in that it featured two lead clarinetists who were both virtuosos with distinctly different styles: Sam Musiker was the American-born klezmer jazzman who could swing — he played in the Gene Krupa Orchestra and served as a sideman to Roy Eldridge and Sarah Vaughan. Dave Tarras was the epitome of the Old World klezmer tradition, Schreter said. The two styles are in a kind of a competition, Schreter said, but are also in collaboration.
Winograd, 40, is capable of pulling off both styles, he added. “You can hear when he’s playing Sam Musiker and you can hear when he’s playing Dave Tarras,” Schreter said. “He’s always playing Michael Winograd, of course. And he doesn’t sound identical to them. He doesn’t want to.”
According to Hankus Netsky, founder of the Klezmer Conservatory Band of Boston and co-chair of the New England Conservatory of Music’s Contemporary Musical Arts program, Winograd is one of the most inspired klezmer musicians of his generation. “His current band is the best thing going at the moment,” said Netsky. “The level of Winograd’s cadre of musicians is kind of astronomical.”
The line-up for the JCC performance includes Marine Goldwasser on clarinet; Alec Spiegelman on saxophone and bass clarinet; Frank London on trumpet; Will Holshouser on accordion; Carmen Staaf on piano; Zoe Guigueno on bass; David Licht on drums, and Katie Scheele on English horn.
Virtuoso jazz and classical clarinetist Don Byron was in the Klezmer Conservatory Band from 1981 to 1987. He recalled when he first heard “Tanz”: in 1981, when his roommate, KCB bassist Jim Guttman, brought the LP from a used record store in Boston and asked him to have a listen.
“I listened to it once and I was, like, ‘We gotta play this,’” said Byron, who attended the Manhattan School of Music with Ray Musiker’s son, Lee. “Nobody [in the klezmer scene] knew anything about that record.”
The KCB played two selections from “Tanz” at every performance while Byron was in the band, though they removed the tunes from its repertoire when he left in 1987. Now, with Thursday’s performance, the full album will finally get its due. “Sam [Musiker] was one of my heroes,” Byron said. “To me, the tunes that he did [on ‘Tanz’] were some of the great achievements of modernism in the [klezmer] idiom.”
“Michael Winograd Plays ‘Tanz’: A Live Album Recreation” will take place at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan on Thursday, Feb. 16 at 7:00 p.m. Tickets, $10, and information here.
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Israel Strikes Hezbollah Targets in Several Areas in Lebanon
Illustrative: Smoke rises after Israeli strikes following Israeli military’s evacuation orders, in Tayr Debba, southern Lebanon, Nov. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ali Hankir
The Israeli military said it was striking Hezbollah targets in several areas in Lebanon on Thursday, adding that the strikes were in response to Hezbollah‘s “repeated violations of the ceasefire.”
An Israeli military spokesperson had earlier issued a warning to residents of certain buildings in the Lebanese village of Sohmor.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in 2024, ending more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that had culminated in Israeli strikes that severely weakened the Iran-backed terrorist group. Since then, the sides have traded accusations over violations.
Lebanon has faced growing pressure from the US and Israel to disarm Hezbollah, and its leaders fear that Israel could dramatically escalate strikes across the battered country to push Lebanon‘s leaders to confiscate Hezbollah‘s arsenal more quickly.
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Pakistan-Saudi-Turkey Defense Deal in Pipeline, Pakistani Minister Says
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif meet in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 17, 2025. Photo: Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have prepared a draft defense agreement after nearly a year of talks, Pakistan‘s Minister for Defense Production said, a signal they could be seeking a bulwark against a flare-up of regional violence in the last two years.
Raza Hayat Harraj told Reuters on Wednesday the potential deal between the three regional powers was separate from a bilateral Saudi–Pakistani accord announced last year. A final consensus between the three states is needed to complete the deal, he said.
“The Pakistan–Saudi Arabia-Turkey trilateral agreement is something that is already in pipeline,” Harraj said in an interview.
“The draft agreement is already available with us. The draft agreement is already with Saudi Arabia. The draft agreement is already available with Turkey. And all three countries are deliberating. And this agreement has been there for the last 10 months.”
Asked at a press conference in Istanbul on Thursday about media reports on negotiations between the three sides, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said talks had been held but that no agreement had been signed.
Fidan pointed to a need for broader regional cooperation and trust to overcome distrust that creates “cracks and problems” that led to the emergence of external hegemonies, or wars and instability stemming from terrorism, in the region.
“At the end of all of these, we have a proposal like this: all regional nations must come together to create a cooperation platform on the issue of security,” Fidan said. Regional issues could be resolved if relevant countries would “be sure of each other,” he added.
“At the moment, there are meetings, talks, but we have not signed any agreement. Our President [Tayyip Erdogan]’s vision is for an inclusive platform that creates wider, bigger cooperation and stability,” Fidan said, without naming Pakistan or Saudi Arabia directly.
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The Trump-Backed Palestinian Who Wants to Push Gaza’s Rubble Into the Sea
A drone view shows Palestinians walking past the rubble, following Israeli forces’ withdrawal from the area, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, in Gaza City, Oct. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Ali Shaath, the Palestinian former government official chosen to administer Gaza under a US-backed deal, has an ambitious plan that includes pushing war debris into the Mediterranean Sea and rebuilding destroyed infrastructure within three years.
The appointment of the civil engineer and former deputy planning minister on Thursday marked the start of the next phase of US President Donald Trump‘s plan to end Israel’s war in Gaza.
Shaath will chair a group of 15 Palestinian technocrats tasked with governing the Palestinian enclave after years of rule by Hamas terrorists.
Under Trump‘s plan, Israel has withdrawn from nearly half of Gaza but its troops remain in control of the other half, a wasteland where nearly all buildings have been destroyed. Trump has floated turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Shaath will face the uncertain task of rebuilding the territory’s shattered infrastructure and clearing an estimated 68 million tons of rubble and unexploded ordnance even as Israel and Hamas continue to trade fire.
After past rounds of fighting with Israel, Palestinians in Gaza used war rubble as foundational material for the historic marina in Gaza City and for other projects. In an interview with a Palestinian radio station on Thursday, Shaath suggested a similar approach.
“If I brought bulldozers and pushed the rubble into the sea, and made new islands, new land, I can win new land for Gaza and at the same time clear the rubble,” Shaath said, suggesting the debris could be removed in three years.
He said his immediate priority was the provision of urgent relief, including forging temporary housing for displaced Palestinians. His second priority would be rehabilitating “essential and vital infrastructure,” he said, followed by reconstruction of homes and buildings.
“Gaza will return and be better than it used to be within seven years,” he said.
According to a 2024 UN report, rebuilding Gaza’s shattered homes will take until at least 2040, but could drag on for many decades.
REBUILDING GAZA
Shaath, born in 1958, is originally from Khan Younis in southern Gaza. He previously served as the deputy minister of planning in the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, where he currently resides.
In that role and others, he oversaw the development of several industrial zones in the West Bank and Gaza. He holds a PhD in Civil Engineering from Queen’s University Belfast.
Shaath’s upbeat assessment of the timeline for rebuilding Gaza is almost certain to face challenges as mediators struggle to agree terms on disarming Hamas, which refuses to give up its weapons, and deploying peacekeepers in the enclave.
It was unclear how Shaath’s committee would proceed with rebuilding and gaining permissions for the import and use of heavy machinery and equipment – generally banned by Israel.
Israel, which cites security concerns for restricting the entry of such equipment into Gaza, did not respond to requests for comment on Shaath’s appointment and plans.
Shaath said the Palestinian committee’s area of jurisdiction would begin with Hamas-controlled territory and gradually increase as Israel’s military withdraws further, as called for in Trump‘s plan.
“Ultimately, the [committee’s] authority will encompass the entire Gaza Strip — 365 square kilometers — from the sea to the eastern border,” Shaath said in the radio interview.
SUPPORT FROM HAMAS AND ABBAS
The formation of Shaath’s committee has won support from Hamas, which is holding talks on Gaza’s future with other Palestinian factions in Cairo.
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said the “ball is now in the court of the mediators, the American guarantor and the international community to empower the committee.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose authority has limited sway in the West Bank, voiced support for the committee, which he said would run Gaza through a “transitional phase.”
“We reaffirm the importance of linking the institutions of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza, and avoiding the establishment of administrative, legal and security systems that entrench duality and division,” Abbas said in a statement published on Thursday by the official WAFA news agency.
Israel and Hamas agreed in October to Trump‘s phased plan, which included a complete ceasefire, the exchange of hostages living and deceased for Palestinian prisoners, and a surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
The deal has been shaken by issues including Israeli airstrikes targeting Hamas operatives, the failure to retrieve the remains of one last Israeli hostage, and Israeli delays in reopening Gaza’s border crossing with Egypt.
On Thursday, a senior Hamas figure was among seven people killed in a pair of Israeli airstrikes in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, a Hamas source said.
The source said one of the dead was Mohammed Al-Holy, a local commander in the terrorist group’s armed wing in Deir al-Balah.