A Conversation with Andy Statman, Part Two

Piece Description

Last week, we heard the first of a two-part interview with Klezmer clarinetist, mandolin-player, and composer Andy Statman. Andt ia receiving the 2012 National Heritage Award for his klezmer music. Klezmer music is the  traditional instrumental music of the Jews of Eastern Europe; Andy defines it as Hasidic vocal music played instrumentally. Andy Statman is one of the people responsible for its revival.  But as we learned in last week's podcast, it's impossible to put Andy Statman in any neat musical box. He cuts an extremely wide musical path, he followed his initial absorption into bluegrass and the mandolin with a  fascination  with jazz and the saxophone. Never content to sit still musically, Statman then took up the clarinet and studied Greek, Albanian, and Azerbaijani music. Yet, Statman doesn't drop one musical style for another, he just keeps adding  to his stockpot of knowledge and sensibility, moving effortlessly from genre to another. For example, he followed his pathbreaking album Jewish Klezmer Music, with Flatbush Waltz, a mandolin masterpiece of post-bebop jazz improvisations and ethnically-inspired original compositions.  However, in his last CD,Old Brooklyn, however, Andy Statman presents a real marriage of all his musical styles.  You'll hear strains of  bluegrass, klezmer, jazz and blues coming together in this brilliant work.

Statman has released 20 of his own recordings and has performed on close to 100 others. He's worked with the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Ricky Skaggs, Béla Fleck, Itzhak Perlman, and many others. He fronts the Andy Statman Trio which plays weekly gigs around NYC.

Last week, we heard about and sampled Andy's bluegrass and mandolin. He spoke about the importance of jazz, particularly Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler to his own musical evolution. 

But by 1975, Andy Statman had begun thinking of his own Jewish  musical roots. We pick up the interview with Andy meeting the man who would become his mentor:  the legendary klezmer clarinetist and NEA National Heritage Fellow, Dave Tarras.