King of Klezmer to Set City on Fire

Giora Feidman's name has become synonymous with the best of what contemporary Klezmer music has to offer for his virtuoso musical skills have amazed audiences all over the world. Born in 1936 in Buenos Aires as the child of Jewish immigrants, Feidman grew up to be a real cosmopolitan, halving his life between the USA and Israel when not touring the globe. His musical output creates a bridge between modern day music and Jewish cultural tradition, a mixture of Klezmer and his own perception and understanding of music.

Considered nowadays not only as one of the greatest clarinet virtuosos, he is also thought of as one of the most important modern Jewish musicians whose significance goes beyond the brand of Klezmer and extends across musical realms. Having been born into the four generation long tradition of Klezmer, his younger years were greatly determined by musical variety that reached over to various cultures, and blended tango, swing, ragtime, and blues with the cultural values of his Jewish background. His childhood prepared him for a musical career, and after a classical musical education, Feidman became a soloist even before his coming of age. At the age of 20 he was called to become the youngest solo wind player of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, where he had the chance to work together with all the great conductors of the time. Over the nearly two decades that he spent working with the Orchestra as a soloist and as a teacher, his understanding of music as the "Language of the Deepest Soul" developed; a boundless means of communication that refuses to recognize any kind of limits or barriers.

These twenty years also witnessed Feidman searching for and finally finding the cultural roots of contemporary music within the handed down songs of the people who lived in the country - Jews and Palestinians -, within the Judeo-Arabic melodies of the Sephardic Jews who had emigrated to Arabia, North Africa, and Spain, or within the music of home-comers from Turkey and Persia, and from India and China.

In the early seventies, Feidman left the Orchestra, and he set out to promote the musical version of two thousand years of wandering, a tale that needed to break out from the darkness of a surpassed history. Thus he launched the worldwide Renaissance of Klezmer music, he reintroduced the "Jewish soul" onto the stage of international - or world music. At the same time, inspired by Feidman, a repertoire of chamber musical and symphonic works developed on the basis of traditional and folkloristic, often liturgical elements. He considers himself and his basically spiritualistic music a mediator of a message that needs to be delivered to every woman and every man: the faith in living together in peace. On the occasion of his 65th birthday, he sets out on a concert tour in Central Europe as a symbolic gesture, and audiences in Budapest will have a chance to celebrate with one of the figureheads of universal music.

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Edith Balazs