arts&life

music / on the cover

Rollicking &
Rebellious

The Grammy-winning

Klezmatics bring their

high-energy music to

Detroit to help celebrate

the JN’s 75th anniversary.

KAREN SCHWARTZ
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

60

April 19 • 2018

jn

T

he Klezmatics aren’t just the best band in the
klezmer vanguard; on a good night, they can rank
among the greatest bands on the planet.”
And Time Out New York knows what it’s talking about.
More than three decades ago, musicians Frank
London and Lorin Sklamberg happened to meet in
New York’s East Village and realized a common inter-
est in Jewish and Yiddish culture. London — who sings,
writes songs, and plays trumpet and keyboards — asked
Sklamberg — singer and accordion player, plus guitar
and piano — if he’d be interested in being in a klezmer
band. He was.
They added four more musicians, including Paul
Morrissett — the band’s third original member — and

PHOTO BY ADRIAN BUCKMASTER

created the Klezmatics in 1986.
“The nearly psychedelic variety of the sounds the
band was pumping out onstage even outdid the reck-
less menagerie of bodies and sweat on the dance floor,”
m usic critic Seth Rogovoy wrote in the Forward in
2016. “My critical distance went out the window as my
heart did backflips and my soul connected deeply with
the melodies that echoed the cantorial singing of my
grandfather, and I found myself not so much dancing
but ‘shuckling’ as I became one with the slivovitz-fueled
crowd.”
The six-member Grammy-winning band plays instru-
ments including the violin, accordion, clarinet, saxo-
phone, trumpet, electric bass, drums and more to create