German Goldenshteyn: A Living Tradition

Pay with

About German Goldenshteyn: A Living Tradition

Product Description Over four days at the 2005 KlezKamp, master Moldavian klezmer clarinetist German Goldenshteyn, together with a hand-picked rhythm section of today's greatest Yiddish musicians, sat down and recorded 20 tunes from his staggering collection of over 800 bulgars, freylakhs, horas, khosidls and sirbas. German Goldenshteyn's brilliant command of an old world klezmer sound and repertoire thought lost makes him the 21st century Dave Tarras, Naftule Brandwein, or Shloimke Beckerman. About the Artist German Goldenshteyn brings with him a repertoire and a performance style missing in American klezmer music. Born in 1934, he lost his parents in the Holocaust and after the war, he and his siblings entered an orphanage in Odessa. As a young man, German successfully auditioned for the army band school, after which he spent 10 years playing in military orchestras and completing his service. German later studied at a technical institute in Kiev, earning an engineering degree, and became a machinist in the town of Mogilev-Podolsk (Mohyliv-Podilskyi) near the Ukrain-Moldova border. It was there that he met some older musicians at a Jewish wedding, and had another life-changing audition: the clarinetist of the wedding band handed him his horn and commanded, "play." As a result, from the mid 1950's until he came to the United States in 1994, German played thousands of simkhas. He learned melodies quickly, but found he could not retain too many simultaneously. So, whenever he learned a new one, he would write it down so as not to forget. Over time, German managed "not to forget" more than 800 melodies, most of which have never been heard on this side of the pond. The 20 songs we present here make up one-fortieth(!) of German's repertoire,all of which will be published in new editions as part of our ongoing documentation of German's unique catalogue of music.