Biography
Clarinetist and ethnomusicologist Joel Rubin has safeguarded the instrumental traditions of nineteenth-century Eastern European Jewish communities, sustaining both their historical forms and later evolutions. Serving as director of the Klezmer Music Research Project, he regularly lectures on early Jewish and klezmer music and has appeared alongside Alicia Svigals, accordion and tsimbal player Joshua Horowitz, and the avant-garde Jewish ensembles Brave Old World and Budowitz.
Drawn at first to European classical and avant-garde repertoire, Rubin spent years immersed in traditional Greek and French clarinet idioms before redirecting his focus to Jewish and klezmer sources after encountering a pre-World War II recording by klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras, whose performances have continued to hold his attention. His volume Old-Time Jewish Music for Clarinet contains transcriptions of sixteen pieces drawn from Tarras’s repertoire.
Rubin’s projects have encompassed a broad range of endeavors, among them appearances on Brave Old World’s album Klezmer Music and on a musical retelling of the biblical narrative David and Goliath that included music by Branford Marsalis and narration by Mel Gibson. He leads the Joel Rubin Jewish Music Ensemble, which also includes accordionist Claudio Jacomucci, tsimbal player Kelman Balogh, trumpet player Ferenc Kovacs, and violinist Laszlo Major.
Together with Italian avant-garde composer and klezmer clarinetist Roberto Paci Dalo, Rubin devised Messianic Soundware, a multimedia work employing two clarinets, a live interactive computer system, and an eight-channel sound environment; the production received its first presentation on October 23, 1995, at Insituit Unzeit in Berlin.
Drawn at first to European classical and avant-garde repertoire, Rubin spent years immersed in traditional Greek and French clarinet idioms before redirecting his focus to Jewish and klezmer sources after encountering a pre-World War II recording by klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras, whose performances have continued to hold his attention. His volume Old-Time Jewish Music for Clarinet contains transcriptions of sixteen pieces drawn from Tarras’s repertoire.
Rubin’s projects have encompassed a broad range of endeavors, among them appearances on Brave Old World’s album Klezmer Music and on a musical retelling of the biblical narrative David and Goliath that included music by Branford Marsalis and narration by Mel Gibson. He leads the Joel Rubin Jewish Music Ensemble, which also includes accordionist Claudio Jacomucci, tsimbal player Kelman Balogh, trumpet player Ferenc Kovacs, and violinist Laszlo Major.
Together with Italian avant-garde composer and klezmer clarinetist Roberto Paci Dalo, Rubin devised Messianic Soundware, a multimedia work employing two clarinets, a live interactive computer system, and an eight-channel sound environment; the production received its first presentation on October 23, 1995, at Insituit Unzeit in Berlin.
Albums
