The Klezmer Conservatory Band

Centuries-old klezmer traditions, first carried by traveling Jewish performers across Eastern Europe, gain fresh extension through saxophonist, pianist, and composer Hankus Netsky together with the Klezmer Conservatory Band. Performing Yiddish songs, the ensemble weaves an array of outside influences into its Jewish dance repertoire. Netsky, who chairs the jazz studies department at the New England Conservatory of Music, launched the group in Boston during 1980. As the grandson and nephew of 1920s klezmer players, he drew motivation from spontaneous Irish music sessions and sought to replicate that approach with klezmer. Conceived initially as a single concert, the project won such enthusiastic reception that the ensemble became ongoing. Several musicians were drawn from the conservatory’s third-stream department. Although New York-born lead singer Judy Bressler represented a third-generation interpreter of Jewish material, most players arrived from jazz or folk backgrounds. The band appeared in the 1988 documentary A Jumpin’ Night in the Garden of Eden. It later supplied scores for the film Enemies, A Love Story, Joel Grey’s Yiddish revue Berschtcapades ’94, and the children’s video The Fool and the Flying Ship, narrated by Robin Williams. Additional partnerships with the American Repertory Theater and the American Music Theater Festival produced the musical Shlemiel the First, adapted from an I.B. Singer play. Beyond leading the Klezmer Conservatory Band and instructing at the New England Conservatory of Music, Netsky serves on the faculty of the Yiddish Folk Arts Institute and has offered Yiddish music courses at Hebrew College.