Michael Alpert

Michael Alpert (born 1954, Los Angeles, USA) is a klezmer and Yiddish singer, multi-instrumentalist, scholar and educator and has been called a key figure in the klezmer revival of the 1970s and 1980s.He has played in a number of groups since that time, including An-Sky Ensemble, Brave Old World, Khevrisa, Kapelye, The Brothers Nazaroff and Voices of Ashkenaz, as well as with clarinetist David Krakauer, hip-hop artist Socalled and bandurist Julian Kytasty.Alpert is also a noted teacher and researcher of Yiddish traditional dance and has worked to see dance retake its traditional place in connection with klezmer music.He is a recipient of the 2015 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts.Alpert has continued to perform through 2017. Alpert has travelled throughout Eastern Europe and the Americas to document Jewish traditional musicians and singers, and published an article in American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots about Warsaw-born klezmer drummer Ben Bazyler (1922-1990).( readable here on Google Books) He can largely be credited with initiating the revival of rhythmic and harmonic "sekund" fiddling in klezmer music, an important aspect of traditional klezmer string technique which had fallen out of use before the klezmer revitalization. He was also musical director of the PBS special Itzhak Perlman: In the Fiddler's House.