Brave Old World is an American and German

klezmer Klezmer ( or ) is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for listening; these wou ...

band. It formed in 1989. Members hail from the US and Germany. ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'' called Brave Old World "the revival's first supergroup. Every player is a virtuoso.” In 1992, the group won first prize at the International Klezmer Festival in Safed, Israel. Clarinetist Joel Rubin was a founding member. The final members were: * Michael Alpert (vocals,

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a Reed (mou ...

guitar The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

) * Alan Bern (musical director,

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

) * Kurt Bjorling (

clarinet The clarinet is a Single-reed instrument, single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore (wind instruments), bore and a flared bell. Clarinets comprise a Family (musical instruments), family of instrume ...

bass clarinet The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common Soprano clarinet, soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays no ...

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to p ...

. accordion, tsimbl) * Stuart Brotman (

double bass The double bass (), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument, chordophone in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions ...

, tsimbl, tilinca, percussion,

trombone The trombone (, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's lips vibrate inside a mouthpiece, causing the Standing wave, air c ...

) *

Christian Dawid Christian Dawid (born 1966) is a German clarinetist, Klezmer musician, educator, and composer. He is generally regarded as one of the top Klezmer musicians in Germany, and has performed with groups such as Trio Yas and Khupe, as well as with inter ...

(associate clarinetist) The group's albums include * Klezmer Music (1990; Flying Fish Records) * '' Beyond the Pale'' (1994;

Rounder Records Rounder Records is an independent record label founded in 1970 in Somerville, Massachusetts, by Marian Leighton Levy, Ken Irwin, and Bill Nowlin. Focused on American roots music, Rounder's catalogue of more than 3000 titles includes records by A ...

) * Blood Oranges (1999; Red House) * Bless the Fire (2003, Pinnorekk Musikverlag, Germany) * Dus Gezang Fin Geto Lodzh / Song of the Lodz Ghetto (2005; Winter and Winter) * Hoffman's Doina (2019, Laurel Records, with solo marimbist

Alex Jacobowitz Alex Jacobowitz (born 19 May 1960 in New York) is a classically trained concert artist and street performer who plays the marimba and xylophone. New York During the early 1980s he studied music at the State University of New York at Bingham ...

) was released as a single. The group has also been featured on two albums by violinist

Itzhak Perlman Itzhak Perlman (; born August 31, 1945) is an Israeli-American violinist. He has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that have included a state dinner for Elizabeth II at the White House in 2007, and at the First ina ...

. A DVD "Brave Old World--Live In Concert" (Sun-Street Inc., Toronto, Canada) was released in 2006.

References

Klezmer groups Red House Records artists Rounder Records artists Musical groups established in 1989 {{Germany-band-stub