Workshop for Faculty and Graduate Students
Michael Alpert, Visiting Lecturer, Borns Jewish Studies Program, Indiana University
Friday, March 4, 12 noon
Distinguished Alumni Room, Indiana Memorial Union, Bloomington
This paper and illustrated presentation examines the art, lore, life stories and world-views of three immigrant-generation Yiddish traditional performers in New York and Los Angeles who became my teachers, colleagues, friends, and informants in the 1980s-90s. They represent instrumentalists and vocalists, men and women, "religious" and "secular" individuals from Austria-Hungary, Czarist Russia/USSR and Poland, all of whom ultimately made their way to the U.S. Remarkable individuals whose life sagas span the 20th century and encompass both East Europe and North America, their art and significance for the klezmer/Yiddish Renaissance and for us today will be examined thru the lenses of historical context, gender, Jewishness and interethnicity, as well as the ever-surprising, incongruous and history- bending experiences I was privileged to share with them.
Michael Alpert, a pioneering figure in the renaissance of klezmer music and an internationally known performer, comes to the Borns JSP for the spring 2011 semester as a Visiting Lecturer and Dorit and Gerald Paul Artist-in-Residence. He has performed and recorded with Brave Old World, Kapelye, Khevrisa, David Krakauer, Theodore Bikel, and has won an Emmy and the Rose D’Or as musical director of the PBS Great Performances special “Itzhak Perlman: In the Fiddler’s House”. He is teaching a course in Ethnomusicology for musicians (FOLK-F 358 “Making Klezmer Music: East European Jewish Music”). The Paul artist-in-residence program provides a unique opportunity to learn directly from a major artist.
