Biography
David Krakauer, a master clarinetist, stands out as a daring musician and creator whose work fuses klezmer, jazz, funk, and classical elements into a singular sound. Leading his own boundary-pushing Klezmer Madness group or performing solo, he has remained central to the modern klezmer, experimental, and new-music worlds through recordings such as the 1995 release Klezmer Madness, 2001’s A New Hot One, and 2014’s Checkpoint. Among his honors is a Grammy nomination earned as featured soloist on the 2014 album Dreams & Prayers. He has also taken part in equally lauded collaborations alongside Paul Moravec, the Kronos Quartet, Osvaldo Golijov, Dawn Upshaw, and additional artists. Krakauer further maintains an active teaching career at the Manhattan School of Music, the New School’s Mannes College of Music, and the Bard Conservatory. He works frequently with pianist and composer Kathleen Tagg, including on their 2022 project Mazel Tov Cocktail Party!
Born in New York City in 1956, Krakauer began on piano before taking up the clarinet at age nine. He pursued classical training and later encountered the recordings of jazz clarinetist Sydney Bechet. Following high school he continued his studies, completing a master’s degree at Juilliard under Leon Russianoff while also attending Sarah Lawrence College and the Paris Conservatory. In his early twenties he stepped back from jazz to concentrate on classical repertoire, yet during the 1980s he turned toward klezmer partly to reconnect with his Eastern European Jewish roots. That shift revived his interest in improvisation, prompting him to develop a contemporary klezmer style that merges traditional structures with jazz, funk, and avant-garde elements while probing new sonic possibilities for the clarinet. In 1988 he joined the forward-looking Klezmatics, contributing to their initial three albums: Shvaygn = Toyt, Rhythm + Jews, and Jews with Horns.
Krakauer subsequently formed the similarly eclectic Klezmer Madness, which made its recorded debut with the self-titled 1995 album on John Zorn’s Tzadik label. Working alongside Zorn’s Radical Jewish Culture initiative, he helped propel the klezmer revival beginning in the early 1990s. The next year he appeared with the Kronos Quartet on Osvaldo Golijov: The Dream and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, an album that earned France’s Diapason d’Or. Throughout the 2000s he issued a sequence of recordings for Label Bleu, opening with 2001’s A New Hot One. He rejoined Klezmer Madness for 2002’s The Twelve Tribes, which received album-of-the-year honors from Germany’s Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. Another Klezmer Madness project, Bubbemeises: Lies My Gramma Told Me, followed in 2005. That year he also performed on composer Paul Moravec’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Tempest Fantasy. Additional recording credits include work with violinist Itzhak Perlman, vocalist Dawn Upshaw, Continuum, Randy Sandke, and others. In 2012 Krakauer released Masada Book 2: The Book of Angels, Vol. 18: Pruflas, featuring selections drawn from John Zorn’s Masada catalog.
The year 2014 brought Dreams & Prayers, for which Krakauer earned a Grammy nomination as soloist with the conductorless chamber orchestra A Far Cry. Simultaneously he introduced his Ancestral Groove ensemble on the album Checkpoint. He appears on notable recordings by David Del Tredici, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, and Stefan Węgłowski, as well as on soundtracks for films by Danny Elfman, Sally Potter, Ang Lee, and Eric Steel. Live performances have placed him alongside the WDR Big Band, John Cage, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Fred Wesley, the Emerson Quartet, Marin Alsop, Leonard Slatkin, and Anakronic Electro Orkestra, among many others. As a composer Krakauer has co-created several large-scale pieces with pianist and composer Kathleen Tagg; together they unveiled their exploratory Mazel Tov Cocktail Party! project in 2022.
Born in New York City in 1956, Krakauer began on piano before taking up the clarinet at age nine. He pursued classical training and later encountered the recordings of jazz clarinetist Sydney Bechet. Following high school he continued his studies, completing a master’s degree at Juilliard under Leon Russianoff while also attending Sarah Lawrence College and the Paris Conservatory. In his early twenties he stepped back from jazz to concentrate on classical repertoire, yet during the 1980s he turned toward klezmer partly to reconnect with his Eastern European Jewish roots. That shift revived his interest in improvisation, prompting him to develop a contemporary klezmer style that merges traditional structures with jazz, funk, and avant-garde elements while probing new sonic possibilities for the clarinet. In 1988 he joined the forward-looking Klezmatics, contributing to their initial three albums: Shvaygn = Toyt, Rhythm + Jews, and Jews with Horns.
Krakauer subsequently formed the similarly eclectic Klezmer Madness, which made its recorded debut with the self-titled 1995 album on John Zorn’s Tzadik label. Working alongside Zorn’s Radical Jewish Culture initiative, he helped propel the klezmer revival beginning in the early 1990s. The next year he appeared with the Kronos Quartet on Osvaldo Golijov: The Dream and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, an album that earned France’s Diapason d’Or. Throughout the 2000s he issued a sequence of recordings for Label Bleu, opening with 2001’s A New Hot One. He rejoined Klezmer Madness for 2002’s The Twelve Tribes, which received album-of-the-year honors from Germany’s Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik. Another Klezmer Madness project, Bubbemeises: Lies My Gramma Told Me, followed in 2005. That year he also performed on composer Paul Moravec’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Tempest Fantasy. Additional recording credits include work with violinist Itzhak Perlman, vocalist Dawn Upshaw, Continuum, Randy Sandke, and others. In 2012 Krakauer released Masada Book 2: The Book of Angels, Vol. 18: Pruflas, featuring selections drawn from John Zorn’s Masada catalog.
The year 2014 brought Dreams & Prayers, for which Krakauer earned a Grammy nomination as soloist with the conductorless chamber orchestra A Far Cry. Simultaneously he introduced his Ancestral Groove ensemble on the album Checkpoint. He appears on notable recordings by David Del Tredici, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, and Stefan Węgłowski, as well as on soundtracks for films by Danny Elfman, Sally Potter, Ang Lee, and Eric Steel. Live performances have placed him alongside the WDR Big Band, John Cage, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Fred Wesley, the Emerson Quartet, Marin Alsop, Leonard Slatkin, and Anakronic Electro Orkestra, among many others. As a composer Krakauer has co-created several large-scale pieces with pianist and composer Kathleen Tagg; together they unveiled their exploratory Mazel Tov Cocktail Party! project in 2022.
Albums
