New Klezmer Trio

In 1991 the New Klezmer Trio unveiled its debut album and quickly emerged as a driving force behind the Radical Jewish Culture movement. The Bay Area ensemble merged the unrefined textures of traditional klezmer with avant garde jazz and experimental rock, forging an original sound in the process. Two further releases appeared on John Zorn’s Tzadik label: Melt Zonk Rewire in 1996 and Short for Something in 2000.

Clarinetist Ben Goldberg, bassist Dan Seamans, and drummer Kenny Wollesen assembled the group in Berkeley, California, in 1987. Each member brought advanced jazz credentials and an experimental outlook, allowing the trio to treat klezmer-rooted material with considerable freedom. Instruments were routed through electronic effects, and the resulting layered, atmospheric settings first surfaced on the 1991 recording Masks and Faces. Their approach helped ignite the Radical Jewish Culture movement that took hold in New York during the early 1990s. The musicians later joined John Zorn’s newly founded Tzadik roster, which reissued the debut and issued the 1996 follow-up Melt Zonk Rewire. One additional album, Short for Something, appeared in 2000 before the trio disbanded in the decade that followed.