Learn klezmer repertoire with the talented and versatile musician, Kurt Bjorling, who performs on basset-horn, bass clarinet, ‘tsimbl,’ saxophone, and accordion, is noted for a penetrating understanding of ‘klezmer’ music. He is the music director of the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble, founded in 1984.

Kurt has toured and recorded with the Klezmatics (New York) and violinist Itzhak Perlman, and since 1992, he has been a member of Brave Old World. He has composed pieces for orchestra and soloists: “Suite of Yiddish Music,” commissioned in December 1991 by the Concordia Chamber Symphony at New York’s Lincoln Center, “Concertino on Klezmer Music Themes” commissioned by the Huntington Symphony with members of the Cincinnati Klezmer Project and “Barditshever Fantaziye” for clarinet and chamber orchestra, premiered by the Amsterdam Sinfonietta in November 2003.

Kurt has taught music in a number of settings, including the annual Yiddish Folk Arts Program sponsored by the YIVO Institute and Living Traditions, the Multicultural Folk Arts Center’s klezmer music camp at Buffalo Gap, West Virginia, and at numerous European, American and Canadian festivals and workshops. [Jewish Culture Festival (Cracow, Poland), Jüddishe Kulturtage (Berlin), Ashkenaz Festival of New Yiddish Culture (Toronto), KlezmerWochen Weimar, (Germany) and KlezFest (London)].

This event is made possible by the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.