Brave Old World

Klezmer traces its roots to the dance repertoire performed by traveling Jewish musicians across nineteenth-century Europe. Updating this heritage for modern listeners is Brave Old World, whose personnel hail from California, Chicago, New York, and Berlin. The Washington Post labeled the ensemble “the revival’s first supergroup. Every player is a virtuoso.” The Boston Globe observed that Brave Old World “plays a klezmer music that is entirely grounded in the present, so intensely evolved from the music as it was, and, yet, so clearly, obviously, entirely klezmer that one could not seperate out many of the influences.”

Its founding roster comprised clarinetist Joel Rubin, drummer Ben Bazyler, bassist Stu Brotman—previously a member of the 1960s rock band Kaleidescope and a sideman for Canned Heat, Geoff and Maria Muldaur, and Ry Cooder—plus keyboardist Alan Bern, born in Indiana and residing in Berlin, and multi-instrumentalist Michael Alpert, a Kapelye founder and research associate at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, who handled violin, accordion, and vocals while also playing cimbalom, tilinka, and percussion. Clarinet duties later passed from Rubin to Kurt Bjorling, who has served as musical director of the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble since 1984. The group captured first prize at the 1992 International Klezmer Festival in Sofed, Israel, and joined violinist Itzhak Perlman on two additional recordings.