Oct. 22-25 series of events to feature live klezmer music
Dan Grabois
What started with two musicians looking for more klezmer music in Madison has turned into something bigger.
Instead of searching for a place to hear klezmer, Dan Grabois, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison French horn professor, and Meg Lamm, a violinist, decided to create a festival of their own.
Now in its third year, the festival continues to bring music to the community.
At the time, the city already had a klezmer band, Yid Vicious, but Grabois and Lamm wanted more opportunities to hear and play the music they had grown to love.
“We kind of fell in love with klezmer a couple of years ago and just did a really deep dive. But we thought, for us, that’s not enough klezmer in town,” Grabois said.
This year’s festival will take place Oct. 22-25 and is almost entirely free. The festival will feature Grammy-winning klezmer band The Klezmatics, along with Chicago-based Fugu Dugu and local groups including Yid Vicious and Tsuzamen.
Grabois and Lamm built the festival from the ground up. The two are not only co-directors of Klez Fest Midwest but also husband and wife.
Meg Lamm
Running a festival is new to Lamm and Grabois, who describe it as “learning to fly the plane while in the air.”
“We’re learning how to kind of cross the T’s and dot the I’s as far as financial management and negotiations,” Grabois said. “These are things that aren’t taught in college. You kind of learn them on the job, and now this is our job.”
Klezmer has deep roots in Jewish musical tradition, but Lamm and Grabois said the genre continues to evolve through influences from jazz, rock, blues and music from around the world.
Those influences can be heard in their six-member band, Tsuzamen, which combines traditional klezmer with bluegrass and rock. But finding time to rehearse can be challenging for Lamm and Grabois while running a festival.
For Lamm and Grabois, some of the best moments come when they see the audience respond.
“One thing that was super fun is that [at] some of the concerts last year, people were dancing,” Lamm said. “Then you really know they’re having a great time.”
“And playing when people are dancing is also incredibly fun,” Grabois said.
Performances will take place at several venues throughout Madison, including the Mead Witter School of Music and North Street Cabaret. This year’s festival also features a second out-of-town band, local performers and the children’s concert introduced last year.
The final concert of the festival’s third day will be held at the East Side Club. Admission is $20, with proceeds benefiting WORT-FM, a community radio station serving South-Central Wisconsin.
The event is sponsored by the Mead Witter School of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture, and, according to Lamm, “all of the departments and organizations at UW that have contributed to Klez Fest Midwest.”
For more information about the festival, go to klezfestmidwest.org.
