Hankus Netsky (b.

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, 1955) is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and ethnomusicologist. He chairs the Contemporary Improvisation Department at the

New England Conservatory The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a Private college, private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. The conservatory is located on Huntington Avenue along Avenue of the Arts (Boston), the Avenue of the Arts near Boston Symphony Ha ...

. Netsky is founder and director of the

Klezmer Conservatory Band The Klezmer Conservatory Band is a Boston-based group which performs traditional klezmer music; it was formed by Hankus Netsky of the New England Conservatory, New England Conservatory of Music in 1980. Originally formed for a single concert, they ...

, an internationally renowned Yiddish music ensemble, and serves as research director of the Klezmer Conservatory Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and perpetuation of traditional Eastern European Jewish music. He plays the

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 ...

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 ...

, and

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 ...

Education

Netsky holds a Ph.D. in

Ethnomusicology Ethnomusicology is the multidisciplinary study of music in its cultural context. The discipline investigates social, cognitive, biological, comparative, and other dimensions. Ethnomusicologists study music as a reflection of culture and investiga ...

from

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the Methodi ...

and bachelor's and master's degrees in

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography * Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include ...

from

Career

He has taught

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

Music at

Hebrew College Hebrew College is a private college of Jewish studies in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. Founded in 1921, the college conducts Jewish scholarship in a pluralistic, trans-denominational academic environment. Its president is Rabbi Sharon Cohen ...

, the New England Conservatory, and

, and has lectured extensively on the subject in the US, Canada, and Europe. He has also designed numerous Yiddish culture exhibits for the Yiddish Book Center, where he served as Vice President for Education. His essays on klezmer music have been published by the University of California Press, the University of Pennsylvania Press, the University of Scranton Press, the University Press of America, and Hips Road. He is currently an instructor in

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

and contemporary

improvisation Improvisation, often shortened to improv, is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. The origin of the word itself is in the Latin "improvisus", which literally means un-foreseen. Improvis ...

at the

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

. He is musical director for ''Eternal Echoes'', violinist Itzhak Perlman's Sony recording and international touring project featuring cantor Yitzkhak Meir Helfgot, and ''In The Fiddler's House'', a klezmer music video, recording, and touring project. He served as musical director and arranger for Joel Grey's ''Borshtcapades ’94'', and was artistic director for ''A Taste of Passover'' and ''A Taste of Chanukah'', PBS and PRI concert productions that featured Theodore Bikel, recorded live at New England Conservatory and broadcast nationally. He was a consultant, arranger, and featured performer on ''To Life! America Celebrates Israel's 50th'', broadcast internationally by CBS. In December 2002, he conducted the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in a special holiday program also featuring the Klezmer Conservatory Band. He has produced numerous recordings, including ten by the Klezmer Conservatory Band.

Honors and awards

He has been the recipient of the New England Conservatory's outstanding alumni award and the Yosl Mlotek Award for the perpetuation of Yiddish culture, and was honored twice by New England Conservatory for excellence in teaching with the Louis Krasner and Lawrence Lesser awards.

Compositions

His film scores include, ''Theo Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem'' (2013), '' The Fool and the Flying Ship'' (1991), a Rabbit Ears children's video narrated by

Robin Williams Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian known for his improvisational skills and the wide variety of characters he created on the spur of the moment and portrayed on film, in dramas and comedie ...

, ''The Forward: From Immigrants to Americans'' (1989), and ''The Double Burden: Three Generations of Working Women'' (1992). He adapted and composed the scores to the musicals ''Shlemiel the First'' (1994) (for the American Repertory Theatre) and ''King of the Schnorrers'' (2013), and composed the incidental music for the NPR radio series, ''Jewish Stories From Eastern Europe and Beyond''. His other significant compositions include ''The Trees Of The Dancing Goats'', for Rabbit Ears Radio (PRI), and ''Chagall's Mandolins'', commissioned by the Niew Sinfonietta of Amsterdam.

References

External links

Klezmer Conservatory Band Biographies

An essay about Polish Jewish musicians by Netsky
*
Short Biography and Interviews With Hankus Netsky
* Klezmer: Music and Community in Twentieth-Century Jewish Philadelphia; Temple University Press, 2017. {{DEFAULTSORT:Netsky, Hankus 1955 births Living people Wesleyan University alumni Klezmer musicians Jewish American musicians New England Conservatory faculty American ethnomusicologists American accordionists American male pianists 20th-century American pianists 21st-century American pianists American male saxophonists 20th-century American saxophonists 21st-century American saxophonists