Klezmer and Other Displaced Musics in America

Monday Apr 6, 2026 1:00pm
Lecture

This event forms part of Carnegie Hall’s festival United in Sound: America at 250.

Co-sponsored by the American Society for Jewish Music’s Jewish Music Forum


Admission: Free

Registration is required.

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In this lecture, scholar and performer Walter Zev Feldman explores the vibrant, yet largely concealed, musical culture of the klezmer revitalization in New York, Philadelphia and other American cities in the 1960s, decades after the period when America served as a crucible for immigrants and their diverse musical expressions. Drawing from his new memoir, From the Bronx to the Bosphorus, (Fordham University Press) Feldman will reflect on how he was instrumental in creating the klezmer revitalization in the US after learning from Greek immigrant musicians and then from the eminent klezmer Dave Tarras (1897-1989).

Buy From the Bronx to the Bosphorus: Klezmer and Other Displaced Musics of New York. 

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.


About the Speaker

Photo: Nikolay Busygin

Walter Zev Feldman is a leading researcher in Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music, instrumental in the 1970s Klezmer Revival. His notable works include Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory (2016) and Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire (1996; 2024, revised edition). Feldman has extensively studied the instrumental traditions of Moldova’s klezmer and lautar communities. He is the Academic Director of the Klezmer Institute.