Projects

The Classics

• The Yiddish Radio Project: Co-produced with Sound Portraits Productions, this Peabody Award-winning, 10-week radio series on the history of Jewish broadcasting for National Public Radio’s "All Things Considered" aired in Spring 2002. The program sparked a seven-city nationwide live concert tour, best-selling CDs, and reached over thirteen million people. See www.yiddishradioproject.org.
  
  
• KlezKamp Roadshow: Share the KlezKamp experience with your community center or congregation back home by bringing them a one-day, weekend, or week-long immersion in Yiddish culture. Led by our experienced and inspiring staff, the KlezKamp Roadshow offers lectures, workshops, and performances featuring klezmer music, Yiddish radio, dance, folktales, songs, and crafts. Contact us to order "Jewish Folks Arts to Go" — we deliver!

Our small, but growing Living Traditions label has issued these wonderful recordings: 

• "Live from KlezKamp! The Staff Concerts 1985-2003": A 2 CD set featuring the best of 20 years of KlezKamp staff concerts.
  
  
• "The Green Duck/Di Grine Katshke: A Menagerie Of Yiddish Songs For Children": Your kids will love this wonderful collection of songs about animals performed in Yiddish by Paula Teitelbaum and Lorin Sklamberg, joined by world-class klezmer musicians. More info>>
  
  
• "Zvee Scooler: Der Grammeister" CD: An anthology of this beloved Yiddish actor’s selected radio performances, poetry, and even commerials was released in December 2006.  This is the first in a series in Living Traditions’ releases — in the original Yiddish — of rare selections from the Yiddish Radio Project archives. More info>>
  
  
• "Ray Musiker: A Living Tradition" CD: At KlezKamp 2006, clarinet master Ray Musiker recorded the next in our "A Living Tradition" CD series, featuring Musiker’s original and classic material and backed by a stellar staff ensemble of Pete Sokolow (piano), Alex Kontorovich (alto sax), Ken Maltz (tenor sax), Jim Guttmann (bass), Aaron Alexander (drums), and Henry Sapoznik (guitar). More info>>
  
  
• "German Goldenshteyn: A Living Tradition" CD: Over four days at KlezKamp 2005, the late Moldavian klezmer clarinetist German Goldenshteyn, together with a hand-picked rhythm section of today’s greatest Yiddish musicians, sat down and recorded 20 tunes from his staggering collection of over 800 bulgars, freylekhs, horas, khosidls, and sirbas. More info >>

Plus: 

• "From the Repertoire of German Goldenshteyn" (C or Bb Notation)  a book of 100 of the 800 klezmer tune transcriptions that German Goldenshteyn wrote down over his lifetime, including 20 songs featured on the Living Traditions CD. To order>>  (sorry, Bb book is out of print.) 

What’s new?/ What’s coming up?

• Elaine Hoffman-Watts: A Living Tradition recorded at KlezKamp 2007, this live/studio recording features klezmer's drumming doyenne, Elaine Hoffman Watts and her hand picked orchestra -- including daughter Susan Watts -- on a memorable recording of historic Philadelphia klezmer music at its finest. 
   
• Living Traditions, in association with the English record label JSP is issuing Cantors, Klezmorim and Crooners 1905-1953: Classic Yiddish 78s From the Mayrent Collection a 3 CD box set  celebrating the Mayrent Collection, the world's largest private collection of Yiddish 78 RPM recordings.
   
  
• Pete Sokolow: A Living Tradition (in production): Veteran klezmer bandleader and multi-instrumentalist Pete Sokolow salutes his many great musical influences such as Dave Tarras, Max Epstein, Sid Beckerman and Paul Pincus in recreating some of their greatest clarinet performances. 

In the wings

• German Goldenshteyn Volume 2:  A reunion of the musicians who appeared on the first historic recording of the late Moldavian master German Goldenshteyn, this new CD to be recorded at the 25th annual KlezKamp will feature materials chosen by  Goldenshteyn and producers Alex Kontorovich and Henry Sapoznik at the time of the last recording session.

Through these year-round projects, Living Traditions encourages development of a worldwide Jewish community knowledgably steeped in Yiddish language, culture, and traditions too often forgotten in modern Jewish life.

Show and Kvell:
The Yiddish Radio Project Wins the Prestigious Peabody Award

The Yiddish Radio Project, Sound Portraits and Living Traditions 10-part NPR series on the history of Yiddish broadcasting has won the coveted Peabody prize. The Peabody Award for Excellence in Electronic Journalism is considered the most selective and distinguished award in broadcasting. The Yiddish Radio series was produced by Dave Isay and Henry Sapoznik.

From the press release issued by the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication which awards the prize:

“…A National Public Radio program special, “The Yiddish Radio Project,” an exuberant celebration of memory, history, and nostalgia provided the Peabody Board with some of its most enjoyable listening…”

This is the first time in its 62-year history that a Peabody award has gone to a Yiddish program.

For further information, chek out the Peabody site.

More Yiddish Radio…

Maybe you’re one of the 10 million people who heard the Yiddish Radio Project on NPR’s All Things Considered this past spring. If so, you know the material is pretty amazing: dramas, music, comedies, news, Dadaist poetry, Holocaust survivor reunions, and commercials for everything from Manischewitz matzos to Portnow's Wonder Trusses. Preserved on over 1,000 fragile discs, these programs reflect the Yiddish-American world during its renaissance and decline, and in the voices of the people as they lived it.

If you didn’t hear it, or if you’d like to hear it again, please visit www.yiddishradioproject.org, our very cool website. We are also happy to offer the critically acclaimed “Yiddish Radio Project” in a 2 CD set (or 2 audio cassettes) hosted by NPR’s Scott Simon and its companion CD “Music From the Yiddish Radio Project”. (Order form for the CDs). Both contain original unedited materials plus several surprise bonus tracks (hint: goofy commercials).

Purchases from our website help Living Traditions in its work to keep Yiddish culture up-close and personal for new generations.

Klezmer! Jewish Music from Old World to Our World

For the first time, Yiddish music scholar Henry Sapoznik traces the complete history of this vital musical tradition, from the Eastern European Jewish musicians who brought with them a rich tradition of band music known as klezmer (from the Yiddish word for “musician”); to the influences of the dance bands and swing bands of the 1920s and 1930s; to the 1970s, when a new group of young Jewish musicians rediscovered this music; and through today's rebirth as world music. Find out more…

^ Back to top