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Internationally acclaimed clarinetist David Krakauer and his Klezmer Madness quintet will give a concert 8 p.m. today at the Williams Center for the Arts.
Tickets cost $18 for the public and can be purchased by calling the box office at 610-330-5009. The concert is a co-presentation of the Williams Center and Hillel Society.
Klezmer Madness centers on the musical diaspora of Jewish folk music, adding the contemporary sounds of drums, electric guitar, and accordion. Its sound embraces North African music, American blues, urban jazz, and cultural treasures from many worlds and peoples. While firmly rooted in traditional klezmer folk tunes, the band “hurls the tradition of klezmer music into the rock era,” notes The New York Times.
Klezmer Madness performances have included a sold-out concert at New York’s Symphony Space, a headlining show at the Dallas JCC marathon, numerous European tours, a series at Merkin Concert Hall in New York, and appearances at jazz festivals ranging from District Curators’ JazzArts Festival in Washington, D.C., to Austria’s Saalfeiden Festival.
Krakauer has had recent major profiles in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The International Herald Tribune, and Downbeat, Jazz Times, Jazziz, and Chamber Music magazines. “You’ve got one extremely gifted, amazingly versatile, and uncommonly open-minded virtuoso, willing and able to go anywhere with his clarinet,” declares Jazziz.
He is a natural storyteller who has long dazzled colleagues and the public with his ability to shift and meld musical gears. eHe HHeHhhhWith best-selling classical and klezmer recordings to his credit, Krakauer’s discography contains some of the most important klezmer recordings of the past decade. A New Hot One! received France’s prestigious Diapason d’Or Prize and has been hailed a masterwork by the International Herald Tribune, Le Mond, Télérama, Jazzman, Jazz magazine and Les Inrockuptibles. His latest CD, The Twelve Tribes, was designated album of the year in the jazz category for the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
He is in demand worldwide as a guest soloist with the finest chamber music groups. Recent collaborations have included the Tokyo String Quartet, the Eroica Trio, the Kronos Quartet, the Lark Quartet, the Mendelssohn String Quartet, and the Empire Brass Quintet. Programs have ranged from Brahms and Bartok to Schoenberg and Golijov.
Krakauer’s collaboration with the Kronos Quartet has thrilled audiences at London’s Royal Festival Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s “Next Wave Festival,” Cal Performances in Berkeley, Calif., Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and in Copenhagen, Paris, and Frankfurt. Their acclaimed recording of Osvaldo Golijov’s The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind for Nonesuch Records was voted one of the ten best discs of 1997 by Time Out Magazine. “Mr. Krakauer gives the work a truly gripping performance,” wrote The New York Times. They gave a special performance of their collaboration at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in spring 2003.
A graduate of Juilliard, Krakauer is a member of the clarinet and chamber music faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, the Mannes College of Music, and Queens College.
The nationally recognized Performance Series attracts more than 10,000 people each season. It has been cited for performing excellence by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, Chamber Music America, Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund, Pennsylvania Arts and Humanities Councils, and Association of Performing Arts Presenters.
The 2003-04 Performance Series at Lafayette is supported in part by gifts from Friends of the Williams Center for the Arts; by the F.M. Kirby Foundation; by provisions of the Alan and Wendy Pesky Artist-in-Residence Program, the James Bradley Fund, and the Ed Brunswick Jazz Fund; and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Performing Arts on Tour, and New England Foundation for the Arts.