Performances + Events
When legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman took the stage at Symphony Hall earlier this month for a performance of the Klezmer music production In the Fiddler’s House, he was joined in part by the Klezmer Conservatory Band, a group that was formed nearly 50 years ago at New England Conservatory.
Longtime NEC faculty member Hankus Netsky ’76, ’78 MM, who serves as advisor to the Conservatory’s Contemporary Musical Arts Department, had graduated from and just joined the faculty at NEC when he held a jam session focused on Klezmer/Yiddish music.
Netsky had been inspired by a revival of Irish music that was seeded in his hometown, the Philadelphia neighborhood of Germantown. His own roots were steeped in Jewish cultural traditions.
“My family had been in the business of playing this music,” Netsky said.
In 1979, Netsky took out an ad in Genesis 2: An Independent Voice for Jewish Renewal promoting a Klezmer jam session. That solicitation drew 25 to 30 musicians — two-thirds of whom were from NEC’s Third Stream Department (later Contemporary Musical Arts), Jazz Studies Department, and classical area — to a room in Jordan Hall. It was in that room that a musical movement took hold.
“We were building a scene,” he said, one that happened to attract “all the people at NEC who were into global music.”
In 1980, after a few jam sessions, the 13-piece Klezmer Conservatory Band — which Netsky described as half men, half women, and half Jewish — presented a concert in NEC’s Brown Hall. “Word got around the whole city,” Netsky said, and the performance immediately yielded three gigs.
The band was “brazenly ethnic,” he said. “Nothing was tamped down,” and, perhaps as a result of that animated spirit, “it caught on fast.” Appearances on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion and numerous recordings followed.
What distinguished the Klezmer Conservatory Band from other groups playing similar material was a familiarity with African American music. Those who were part of the ensemble knew the music of Sun Ra, John Coltrane, and Cecil Taylor, among other pathbreaking jazz artists, and Netsky, who came from a family of club-date players, “had been brought into the music scene by Black musician friends.”
It helped that NEC was fomenting this kind of creativity around the exploration of global music. “The school had that ethos” because of Third Stream Department founding chair Ran Blake, Netsky said, adding, “If there hadn’t been a Third Stream Department, I can’t imagine this would’ve happened.”
The growth and development of the Klezmer scene in and around NEC led to curricular offerings. “We’ve had Eastern European Jewish music as a subject at NEC since 1981,” Netsky said, pointing out that generations of musicians have learned Klezmer traditions at the Conservatory.
Another musician who learned a lot about the tradition from Netsky is Perlman. The two have worked together since 1995, when a producer effectively played matchmaker.
Between then and today, Netsky, who serves as musical director for “In the Fiddler’s House,” said, “We’ve gone everywhere. We’ve done a lot.” And that work has played a huge role in fueling the international Klezmer revival.
“It became one of the global musics that everyone knows about,” he said. “The fact that NEC really empowered me to create the band and still teach Eastern European Jewish musical traditions is a big part of it.”
The Klezmer Conservatory Band will perform at the Groton Hill Music Center on June 7 at 7 p.m.
