Michael Winograd and the Honorable Mentshn

818 3rd Avenue,Marlinton WV 24954

29 April, 2023

Description

Klezmer is the traditional celebratory music of the Eastern European Jewish diaspora. With roots that pre-date the Middle Ages, klezmer incorporates cantorial melody, ancient folk tunes, Yiddish poetry, Hebraic ritual, and Greek and Ottoman influences. By the 1880s, klezmer was firmly established as the secular, vernacular music of the community, and arrived in the United States with the wave of Jewish immigration around the turn of the century. In the 1970s, a klezmer revival began that has produced a new generation of master musicians. The all-star lineup of Michael Winograd & the Honorable Mentshn is leading this revival into the 21st century. ​ The band—whose name plays on the plural form of the Yiddish approbation “mentsh,” meaning a person of integrity—is the brainchild of Brooklyn clarinet virtuoso Michael Winograd. A graduate of the New England Conservatory, Winograd has become a leader in the modern renaissance of klezmer, a musical style he has played since childhood. One of today’s premier klezmer clarinetists, Winograd works at the forefront of cultural preservation, having co-founded Yiddish New York in 2015, and serving as the artistic director of KlezKanada, one of the world’s largest hubs for Klezmer and Yiddish education and cultural transmission.  ​