The Maxwell Street Klezmer Band of Chicago was among the first ensembles in the rebirth of klezmer music in the late 1970s-early 1980s. Like the klezmer revival itself, the band is still going strong and will demonstrate that at a concert at Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue in Mequon on Sunday, March 10, 7 p.m.
Founded in 1983, the band takes its name from the street that was the hub of Chicago’s immigrant Jewish community at the turn of the century. (Though most of the group hails from Chicago, it also includes Milwaukee-area clarinetist Jeff Jeziorski.)
The ensemble’s repertoire, displayed in three recordings with one more on the way, includes klezmer standards and Yiddish theater songs, plus Russian and Roma (“Gypsy”) music, folk songs and novelty arrangements. This diversity is one reason the band has endured, band leader and vocalist Lori Lippitz said in a telephone interview.
“There’s a great deal of variety going on” in a MSKB concert, she said. The band strives “to get the very broadest scope of Jewish cultural experiences.”
Some of this approach reflects Lippitz, who calls herself “a salad bar kind of person,” Lippitz said. “I like different things and surprises.” Violinist and the band’s primary arranger Alex Koffman feels the same way and provides arrangements that are “quirky and surprising without being angry or dissonant or obscure,” Lippitz said.
The Beth El program will present “a large assortment of different flavors, colors and textures” from “the Russia of the 1800s through American Jewish jazz orchestras of the 1950s,” Lippitz said. Most of the selections will come from the band’s previous recording, “You Should Be So Lucky,” and its forthcoming one, scheduled to be released this spring with the tentative title “Dusk to Dawn.”
General admission is $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Other ticket categories include: benefactor, $1,000; angel, $500; sponsor, $250; and patron, $100.
To order tickets or for more information, call the synagogue at 262-242-6900; or visit www.bethelnertamid.com or www.klezmerband.com.
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