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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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The post An ahead-of-its-time klezmer album will be performed live for the first time appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Accuses US of Ground Assault Plans as Pakistan Hosts Regional Talks
Foreign Ministers Badr Abdelatty of Egypt, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, Ishaq Dar of Pakistan and Hakan Fidan of Turkey pose for a group photo during their meeting to discuss regional de-escalation, amid the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran, in Islamabad, Pakistan, March 29, 2026. Photo: Muammer Tan/Turkish Foreign MinistryHandout via REUTERS
Iran said it was ready to respond to any US ground attack, accusing Washington of preparing a land assault while seeking talks, as regional powers met in Pakistan on Sunday to try to bring the two sides together.
The initial discussions in Islamabad with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt focused on proposals to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, sources familiar with the matter said. More talks will be held on Monday.
Iran’s effective blockade of oil and gas shipments through the strait since the US and Israel began attacking the country on February 28 is spreading economic pain around the world. Food and energy security and supply chains were among issues discussed in Pakistan, Egypt’s foreign ministry said.
As the conflict entered its second month, Israel‘s military said it had launched over 140 air strikes on central and western Iran, including Tehran, over the 24 hours to Sunday evening, hitting ballistic missile launch sites and storage facilities, among other targets.
A chemical plant in southern Israel near the city of Beer Sheva was hit by a missile or missile debris as Israel fended off multiple salvos from Iran, prompting official warnings to the public to stay away due to “hazardous materials.”
Another missile hit open ground near homes in Beer Sheva, located near several military bases, injuring 11 people.
The war has killed thousands of people and affected countries across the Middle East, with major aluminum plants in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates damaged by air strikes over the weekend.
The UAE, which has faced more Iranian missile and drone attacks than any other country, is seeking reparations from Iran for attacks on civilians and vital facilities and clear guarantees to prevent any repetition, an adviser to the president said.
Pakistan has offered to host peace talks, but the United States, Israel and Iran have set out maximalist positions to end the warfare, complicating the path to a solution.
Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf accused the US of sending messages about possible negotiations while at the same time planning to send in troops, adding that Tehran was ready to respond if US soldiers were deployed.
“As long as the Americans seek Iran’s surrender, our response is that we will never accept humiliation,” he said in a message to the nation.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis joined the conflict on Saturday launching their first attacks on Israel and raising the prospect they could target and thus block a second key shipping route, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Analysts say renewed attacks there would pile further pressure on the world economy.
US MARINES START ARRIVING IN MIDDLE EAST
Washington has dispatched thousands of Marines to the Middle East, with the first of two contingents arriving on Friday aboard an amphibious assault ship, the U.S. military has said.
The Washington Post quoted US officials as saying the Pentagon was preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran, adding that it was not yet clear if President Donald Trump would approve such plans.
Reuters has reported that the Pentagon has considered military options that could include ground forces.
Trump faces a stark choice between seeking a negotiated exit or escalating militarily that risks a protracted crisis, and would likely weigh further on his already low approval ratings.
“President Trump has poor options all around to end the war,” said Jonathan Panikoff, former US deputy national intelligence officer for the Middle East.
“Part of the challenge is the lack of clarity related to what a satisfactory outcome would be,” Panikoff added.
Washington said last week it had offered a 15-point ceasefire plan, with a proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restrict Iran’s nuclear program, but Tehran has rejected the list and put forward proposals of its own.
ISRAEL HITS DOZENS OF TARGETS ACROSS IRAN
An Israeli official said Israel would continue carrying out strikes against Iran on what were described as military targets, adding there was no intention to scale back the campaign ahead of any possible talks between Washington and Tehran.
A building housing Qatar’s Al-Araby TV in Tehran was hit on Sunday, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported, with video showing walls and windows blown out of the multi-storey block.
“The missile hit. The ceiling and everything fell on our heads. Unfortunately, we couldn’t continue to work. It was a real miracle we survived,” said Al Araby camera operator Mohammadreza Shademan. “There was no military target here.”
With US midterm elections due in November, the increasingly unpopular war has weighed on Trump’s Republican Party. Demonstrators took to city streets across the US on Saturday in protests against the conflict.
Trump has threatened to hit power stations and other energy infrastructure if Iran does not open the Strait of Hormuz, though he has extended a deadline by 10 days through April 6.
A European diplomat warned that any further military escalation could make it harder to bring the two sides together, potentially delaying the possibility by weeks, if not longer.
Iranian threats against ships have kept most oil tankers from attempting the waterway. Iran has agreed to let an additional 20 Pakistani-flagged vessels pass through the strait, with two ships permitted to transit daily, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has said, calling it a “harbinger of peace.”
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Pentagon Preparing for Weeks of Ground Operations in Iran
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth holds a briefing with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, US, March 19, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Evan Vucci
The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran, the Washington Post reported Saturday, citing US officials.
The plans could involve raids by Special Operations and conventional infantry troops, the Post reported. Whether President Donald Trump would approve any of those plans remains uncertain, according to the Post.
The Trump administration has deployed US Marines to the Middle East as the war in Iran stretches into its fifth week, and also has been planning to send thousands of soldiers from the US Army’s 82nd Airborne to the region.
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America’s oldest synagogue closed. Then an unlikely group tended its cemetery.
In 1833, Herald of the Times, a Newport, Rhode Island, newspaper, reported that the remains of Mrs. Rebecca Lopez had been brought from New York by steamboat and placed inside Touro Synagogue.
Dedicated in 1763, the building is now recognized as the nation’s oldest surviving synagogue. Newport had once been home to a thriving colonial Jewish community, but after the Revolutionary War and the city’s economic decline, that community had largely faded. The cemetery remained, and so did the synagogue. It was during that long interval of near-absence that Lopez’s funeral briefly reopened Jewish ritual life in Newport.
After prayers were read by Rabbi Isaac Seixas of New York, the body was carried to the cemetery on Touro Street, with “the clergy, town council, and a numerous concourse of spectators” joining the funeral procession. The paper noted that a Jewish ceremony had not been performed there “for the space of forty years.”
Newport’s Jewish burial ground dated to 1677. In 1822, Abraham Touro left money for the upkeep of the cemetery, the synagogue, and the street on which they stood. The fund was placed under trustees appointed by the Rhode Island legislature, and Newport’s Town Council was later authorized to use the interest for repairs.
While Newport’s Jewish population declined, the endowment ensured that the synagogue building and cemetery grounds continued to be maintained. In 1826, the Town Council reported that it had tried to repair the synagogue using the Touro fund, but could not proceed because it had not been able to obtain the keys from Shearith Israel in New York. Many of Newport’s former Jewish residents had relocated there, and the congregations had longstanding ties.
In 1842, the council contracted to enclose the synagogue lot with a substantial stone wall and an ornamental cast-iron fence, modeled on the fence around the Jewish cemetery. The work included a Quincy granite base and a gateway on Touro Street designed to correspond with the synagogue’s portico. The project cost $6,835.
The synagogue’s doors rarely opened, and often only for moments of mourning. In June 1854, Newport received the body of Judah Touro, one of the most prominent American Jews of his era, a native of the town and brother of Abraham Touro. The Herald of the Times reported that “the streets was [sic] crowded with people, the stores all closed, and the bells tolled.”
The City Council assembled at City Hall and marched in procession to the synagogue, where “thousands remained outside” during the service. At the funeral, Newport’s mayor, William C. Cozzens, spoke of the trust that had long existed between the city and local Jewish families, recalling that the synagogue and cemetery had been left in Newport’s care and maintained there “with ample means for their preservation.”
When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited Newport’s Jewish cemetery that same year, he wrote of the graves as “silent beside the never-silent waves.” He noticed, too, what endured there: “Gone are the living, but the dead remain,” he observed, “and not neglected.”
Newport’s preservation of Jewish sacred space was shared. Jews endowed these places and returned to bury their dead there. Christian officials repaired, protected, and publicly honored them. In this way, a Jewish inheritance was carried forward until communal life returned.
In 1883, Touro Synagogue was rededicated and a new Jewish community established in Newport. But even in the window of years when the congregation was gone, the dead were not abandoned.
The graves were kept.
The post America’s oldest synagogue closed. Then an unlikely group tended its cemetery. appeared first on The Forward.