Biography
Clarinetist German Goldenshteyn served as an essential bridge to long-vanished klezmer practices by committing more than one thousand folk songs to paper, songs that constitute the foundation of Yiddish musical culture. He entered the world on September 2, 1934, in Otaci, Romania. World War II left him orphaned, prompting him and his brothers to peddle cigarettes and matches on city streets for survival. Following the Soviet Union’s occupation of their homeland in late 1944, the siblings entered an orphanage in Odessa. A musical aptitude test there identified Goldenshteyn’s talent, resulting in his transfer to a military music school for clarinet studies. After completing the program in 1949, he performed with multiple Red Army ensembles and fulfilled his formal military obligation between 1953 and 1956.
Goldenshteyn next established residence in Ukraine, where he labored as a machinist and performed evenings with a neighborhood wedding band. In that setting he absorbed an extensive range of Jewish, Russian, Balkan, and Gypsy pieces, carefully notating their lyrics and melodies in notebooks to enlarge the ensemble’s material. His move to the United States in 1994 included the notebooks, and once he took up residence in Brooklyn the musicians and archivists leading the klezmer revival—already underway for two decades—welcomed him warmly. Numerous pieces in his collection had never been recorded before; together with his concerts and workshops they illuminated a Yiddish musical heritage previously accessible only through vintage 78 rpm discs. Mere weeks after the appearance of the CD German Goldenshteyn: A Living Tradition, he died of a heart attack while fishing on Long Island on June 10, 2006.
Goldenshteyn next established residence in Ukraine, where he labored as a machinist and performed evenings with a neighborhood wedding band. In that setting he absorbed an extensive range of Jewish, Russian, Balkan, and Gypsy pieces, carefully notating their lyrics and melodies in notebooks to enlarge the ensemble’s material. His move to the United States in 1994 included the notebooks, and once he took up residence in Brooklyn the musicians and archivists leading the klezmer revival—already underway for two decades—welcomed him warmly. Numerous pieces in his collection had never been recorded before; together with his concerts and workshops they illuminated a Yiddish musical heritage previously accessible only through vintage 78 rpm discs. Mere weeks after the appearance of the CD German Goldenshteyn: A Living Tradition, he died of a heart attack while fishing on Long Island on June 10, 2006.
Albums