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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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Students for Justice in Palestine Surrenders Occidental College Encampment as Trustees Review Divestment Proposal
Member of Occidental College’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine addressing social media while occupying a section of the campus in April 2026. Photo: Screenshot.
Occidental College in Los Angeles informed the public earlier this week that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) took down an encampment it established during the final weeks of the semester to protest the school’s financial ties to Israel, a grievance manufactured by the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement to promote its goal of eliminating the Jewish state.
By all accounts, the short-lived demonstration generated none of the widespread interest and enthusiasm that infused anti-Israel encampments of the 2023-2024 academic year, when many activists on campus vowed not to abandon their tents unless administrators acceded to the demands of the “global intifada.”
In contrast, SJP’s chapter at Occidental left the section of campus it occupied without permission “peacefully,” the college told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.
“Students involved in the encampment cited a recently submitted divestment proposal as their key issue,” it continued in a statement to The Algemeiner. “That proposal is currently under review by the College’s Board of Trustees through the college’s established process, which is designed to gather input from across our community.”
Further evidence of this encampment’s wilted spirit is the college’s confirming that it has successfully identified and initiated disciplinary proceedings against several protesters who engaged in “some actions” which violated the code of conduct as well as policies regulating peaceful assembly.
“These policies exist to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our entire community and to minimize disruption to campus operation,” the college said. “Occidental is committed to upholding these standards. We have been enforcing our policies in a way that prioritizes deescalation and our community’s safety.”
On Tuesday, SJP said it “will be back” in a post which proclaimed, “Long live the liberated zone!! Long live the intifada!! Long live the resistance!!” The statement hints at the possibility of a second encampment should Occidental College ultimately reject the divestment proposal that the school’s communications official said is already being review by the board of trustees.
Historically, Occidental College has opposed SJP’s call for adopting the BDS movement, arguing that doing so “would potentially chill the expression of diverse opinions” and be “divisive and damaging to the college community.” It has also welcomed working with Jewish advocacy groups to improve relations between DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) officials and Jewish students, the latter of whom continue to report that DEI officials across the country block antisemitism investigations or refuse to punish those found guilty of discriminatory conduct.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a federal civil rights complaint against Occidental which alleged that it had failed to correct a “pervasive and hostile environment” in which Jewish students were subject to “severe antisemitic bullying, intimidation, and physical threats.” To settle the case, the college agreed in November 2024 to “sweeping reforms” which included adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as a reference guide for investigations of anti-Jewish hatred and adding a section on antisemitism to training courses on compliance with federal civil rights laws.
“As I believe this resolution demonstrates, antisemitism is antithetical to the college’s values,” Occidental president Tom Stritikus said after the resolution was announced. “Discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students should be unequivocally rejected in our community. As we continue campus discussions around inclusivity, Jewish and Israel identities should be recognized alongside other groups that have historically faced discrimination due to their religious, ancestral, or national identities.”
Occidental College is not the only higher education institution that SJP targeted for the establishment of an encampment this month.
On April 18, SJP at Smith College in Massachusetts occupied the Chapin Lawn section of campus and renamed it “The People’s University.” Armed with a litany of demands calling for “restructuring” Smith’s governance of its endowment, transferring power over the institution from administrators to faculty and students, and a “required course on race” informed by the divisive critical race theory discipline, the students initially vowed to dwell in the encampment indefinitely.
However, the mounting presence of public safety officers around the encampment site and little indication that the demonstration held the drawing power of encampments of previous academic years prompted SJP to consider settling for less than it wanted.
Additionally, the college had notified the group of being in violation of campus policies on peaceful assembly and threatened SJP with disciplinary sanctions, which the group described as “fear tactics.” Tamra Bates, director of student engagement, personally told the students they would be punished as “individuals” and, the group added, public safety officers addressed “at least one student” by their “full name.” After three days, paranoia took hold of the organizers, and they issued a prohibition on photography “at any time … especially of people’s faces.”
SJP ultimately agreed to enter negotiations with the college over email, a process which concluded with Smith College agreeing to hold a meeting with the group and college trustees “before the end of the semester.”
The students decamped the following Saturday.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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US Lawmakers Warn of Aid Cuts if Nigeria Fails to Counter Islamist Attacks Against Christians
A Nigerian police truck stands at the deserted Maiduguri Monday Market the morning after multiple explosions struck the northeastern city of Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria, March 17, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Kingimi
The US House Appropriations Committee has advanced a State Department funding bill which will restrict aid to Nigeria if the current government cannot stop what one lawmaker labeled a genocide against Christians.
“The Tinubu administration is spending millions lobbying Congress while failing to adequately address the genocide Nigerian Christians face daily,” Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV) posted on X on Wednesday. He said the appropriations panel, on which he serves, “just passed our annual State Department funding bill which takes serious steps to address this crisis.”
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who assumed office in May 2023, is a member of the All Progressives Caucus (APC), one of Nigeria’s two dominant political parties, the other being the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The US legislation sets three conditions for Nigeria to receive full funding of aid: “taking effective steps to prevent and respond to violence and hold perpetrators accountable; prioritizing resources to support victims of such violence, including internally displaced persons”; and “actively facilitating the safe return, resettlement, and reconstruction of communities impacted by the violence.”
The bill limits US support for Nigeria to 50 percent unless the American secretary of state can certify the government adheres to all three conditions.
Moore posted on X that the bill requires Nigeria to focus on preventing atrocities, advancing religious freedom, prosecuting Fulani ethnic militia groups, and targeting jihadists. The congressman described how, if signed into law, the measure would insist on the government “bolstering faith-based organizations’ response in areas impacted by violence.”
According to the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA), “between October 2019 and September 2024, ORFA documented 66,656 deaths across Nigeria, of these, 36,056 were civilians. The Fulani Ethnic Militia (FEM) were responsible for a staggering 47 percent of all civilian killings — more than five times the combined death toll of Boko Haram and ISWAP [Islamic State – West Africa Province], which together accounted for just 11 percent of civilian deaths.”
These killings heavily targeted Christians. ORFA notes that “the data reveals that 2.4 Christians were killed for every Muslim during this period, with proportional losses to Christian communities reaching exceptional levels. In states where attacks occur, Christians were murdered at a rate 5.2 times higher than Muslims relative to their population size.”
Following this terrorism, Nigeria has seen a surge in the number of orphans, with data from SOS Children’s Villages showing 17.5 million now in the country, the second highest globally after India.
The violence against Christians is part of a surge of Islamist terrorist attacks across the Sahel region of West Africa, concentrated in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Northern Nigeria. A report released last year from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point revealed that in 2024, 86 percent of all terrorism-related deaths occurred in just 10 countries, with seven in Africa and five in the Sahel.
Over the weekend, Mali saw terrorist attacks in multiple locations which left Defense Minister Sadio Camara dead and the northeastern town Kidal seized. The strikes came following an alliance between Al-Qaeda-linked terror group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM,) and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a separatist group seeking to establish its own state.
Nigeria released a statement of support for Mali.
“Nigeria stands in solidarity with Mali and reaffirms the enduring ties of brotherhood, shared destiny, and collective resilience that define the African spirit,” said the ministry of foreign affairs’ spokesperson, Kimiebi Ebienfa. “The Federal Government of Nigeria condemns the cowardly acts perpetrated by terrorist groups in different parts of the country in recent days which have resulted in the loss of lives and properties.”
Moore explained that the US bill also appropriates millions to fund International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement to counter FEM violence. “That provision also bolsters support for the establishment of state level police forces so Christians in Plateau and Benue aren’t sitting ducks waiting for help from Abuja,” Moore wrote on X.
Under the legislation, Moore said the secretary of state must “submit a plan for every dollar appropriated to Nigeria, and every dollar spent will have direct congressional oversight.” He added that “in my view, the Tinubu administration has failed to live up to the conditions the appropriations committee placed on security assistance.”
On March 16, three simultaneous explosions hit Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s northeast state Borno, resulting in 25 deaths.
The Nigerian government has previously defended itself against claims of failing to fight terrorism against Christians.
“Recent external claims suggesting systemic religious persecution in Nigeria are unfounded,” Foreign Ministry Permanent Secretary Dunoma Umar Ahmed said in November 2025, in response to warnings from President Donald Trump that the US military might need to intervene. “The state continues to wage a comprehensive counter-terrorism campaign against groups that target Nigerians of all faiths.”
Polling from Pew in 2020 found that 56 percent of Nigerians embraced Islam while 43 percent practice Christianity. However, traditional African religious beliefs also maintain broad influence, with approximately 70 percent of adults believing that spells, curses, and magic can impact people’s lives.
Both Christian and Muslim communities saw substantial growth in Nigeria during the last decade. The Muslim population rose 32 percent from 2010 to 2020, while the Christian population increased 25 percent. Nigeria contains the fifth largest Muslim population and sixth largest Christian population.
Overall, Nigeria has a current total population of 241 million people, making it the most populous country in Africa and sixth highest globally after Indonesia and Pakistan.
On Wednesday, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) released a statement from its leader in response to attacks and kidnappings at a church in Eda Oniyo Ekiti (that left one pastor dead) and at the Yagba West Local Government Area of Kogi State.
“We condemn this heinous act in the strongest possible terms. People had gathered peacefully to worship God, and they were met with violence. This is not just an attack on a church; it is a brutal assault on our shared humanity and the sanctity of life,” Archbishop Daniel Okoh said. “We mourn with the family of the slain Pastor and stand in full solidarity with the victims and the entire Christian community in Ekiti State. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who have been taken, and we call for their immediate and safe release.”
The fight to defend Nigerian Christians cuts across the aisle.
“Cracking down on the crisis Christians face in Nigeria has been supported in two appropriations bills by both Republicans and Democrats,” Moore wrote on X, concluding the announcement of the bill. “The United States will not turn a blind eye to the brutal persecution of our Nigerian brothers and sisters in Christ.”
Ebienfa said that “terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations, remains a common adversary that demands unified resolve, sustained cooperation and reaffirmation of our shared humanity to tackle.”
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Janet Mills Drops Out of Maine Senate Democratic Primary, Clearing Path for Anti-Israel Candidate Graham Platner
Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks at a campaign town hall meeting in Ogunquit, Maine, US, Oct. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Thursday announced that she is ending her campaign in the Democratic primary for US Senate, a move that effectively clears the path for progressive challenger Graham Platner to secure the nomination in a high-stakes race against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
In a statement, Mills cited the financial demands of a competitive statewide campaign, acknowledging she lacked the resources to continue. Her withdrawal came after weeks of trailing Platner in grassroots fundraising and momentum, despite support from establishment Democrats.
“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else — the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” Mills said.
“That is why today I have made the incredibly difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the United States Senate,” she continued.
The development represents a sharp ideological shift in the Democratic field. Mills, a two-term governor, had been viewed by party leaders as a pragmatic candidate with broad appeal and a traditionally strong stance on US alliances, including support for Israel. Mills’s candidacy failed to gain traction in the state, with observers pointing to a Democratic primary electorate that is both incensed and deeply desirous for a shakeup from the status quo.
Platner, in contrast to Mills, has built his campaign on an anti-establishment message and drawn increasing scrutiny in part for his rhetoric on the Middle East. Some of his past statements criticizing Israel have alarmed more centrist Democrats and foreign policy observers, who argue his framing downplays Israel’s security concerns and risks alienating key constituencies in a general election.
Platner has repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza and vowed to vote against further military assistance to the Jewish state. Earlier this month, Platner accused Israel of “exterminating” people in Gaza and refused to clarify his stance on whether Israel should remain a Jewish state. Most of his criticisms of Israel’s military conduct in Gaza omit any mention of the Hamas terrorist organization, framing Israel as an aggressor with intent of wiping out the Palestinian population.
Further, Platner came under scrutiny last year after it was revealed that the Democratic insurgent possesses a tattoo of a Totemkopf — a symbol historically used by Nazi military units. Though Platner has emphatically denied any knowledge of the tattoo’s connections to Nazism, skeptics have pointed out that the oyster farmer identifies as a military historian, raising serious doubts about his claims.
Concerns about Platner’s conduct and Totemkompf tattoo are already emerging as a potential liability in a race Democrats had hoped to make competitive. Collins, a moderate Republican with a long record of electoral success in Maine, has historically attracted independents and crossover voters, groups that could be wary of candidates perceived as ideologically extreme.
Mills’s exit also highlights a broader dynamic within the Democratic Party, as insurgent candidates in several primaries continue to gain traction over more traditional figures. While that energy has reshaped races across the country, it has also raised questions about general election viability in closely divided states.
Many observers have argued that Platner’s ascendance in the Democratic Party serves as another signal that the party is shifting further away from Israel and becoming more tolerant of antisemitism. Across the country, support for Israel has emerged as a litmus test within Democratic primary competitions, with candidates vowing to curtail support for Israel and being pressured to condemn the Jewish state as a perpetrator of “genocide.”
Despite Platner’s vulnerabilities and personal baggage, he has racked up a bevy of endorsements from Democratic power-players such as Rep. Ro Khanna (CA) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA). On Thursday, the Democratic Party officially endorsed Platner as the nominee to take on Collins.
As of now, polling indicates a close race in the Maine general election, with several polls showing Platner with a narrow lead over Collins. However, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has not yet aired ads against Platner, and the Republicans are expected to weaponize Platner’s history of controversial commentary in the lead-up to Election Day in November.