YIVO Presents Concert Celebrating Klezmer Musician Dave Tarras's 100-Year Recording Legacy
(New York, NY) – On Thursday, November 20, 2025, at 7:30pm ET, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research will present a concert celebrating the 100-year recording legacy of legendary Klezmer musician Dave Tarras. The program will feature three leading figures of today's Yiddish music scene: NEA National Heritage Fellow Andy Statman (clarinet), Dan Blacksberg (trombone) and Pete Rushefsky (tsimbl/cimbalom). The concert will take place at YIVO (15 West 16th Street, New York, NY, located in the Center for Jewish History building) and will also be available via livestream on Zoom.
Dave Tarras (1897-1989) was the individual most responsible for the development of a uniquely American style of Jewish klezmer music. Born into a large klezmer family in Podolia, central Ukraine, Tarras immigrated to New York in 1921. Here his talent was immediately recognized, and he was quickly conscripted into the local music scene. The year 2025 represents the centennial of Tarras’s initial recordings from 1925. His sparkling five-decade recording career documents his innovations — a new corpus of repertoire as well as a refined style that reflected musically the aesthetics of an upwardly-mobile and assimilating mid-century American Jewish community.
In the mid-1970s, Tarras mentored two young musicians Andy Statman and Walter Zev Feldman. Together, they launched a series of tours and produced an important recording under the sponsorship of the Balkan Arts Center (now the Center for Traditional Music and Dance). The collaboration sparked a revitalization of klezmer on the East Coast, which blossomed into a global revival of Yiddish culture. Statman would go on to carry his mentor’s legacy forward, emerging as the first great clarinet virtuoso produced by the klezmer revival.
YIVO is delighted to present this concert celebrating the 100-year recording legacy of Dave Tarras, in the same year as its own centennial anniversary.
This concert is presented by YIVO, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, Yiddish New York, and the Sholem Aleichem Cultural Center; additional support provided by the Atran Foundation, the Samuels Foundation, and the Howard Gilman Foundation.
What: The Dave Tarras Legacy
When: Thursday, November 20, 2025 at 7:30pm ET
Where: Taking Place on Zoom and in person at YIVO,
Located in the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011)
Cost: In person: General Admission: $15 / Students and YIVO Members: $10
Zoom Livestream: Free
Reservations Available at: yivo.org/Dave-Tarras
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
For more information contact:
Shelly Freeman
Chief of Staff
About the Performers
A virtuosic musician known for his pioneering work in klezmer, bluegrass, jazz, and other disparate styles, Grammy-nominated Andy Statman rose out of New York’s folk and string band scene in the mid-’70s, first establishing himself as a mandolin master then helping to ignite the klezmer revival as a clarinetist. He learned the craft of klezmer through a long-term mentorship with the legendary clarinetist Dave Tarras, and continues to draw inspiration from the recordings of Bill Monroe, the sounds of New York City, and his wife Barbara. Statman was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2012. He tours nationally with the Andy Statman Trio (Larry Eagle – drums, Jim Whitney – bass) as well as with violinist Itzhak Perlman, and has performed at the Grand Ole Opry with bluegrass guitarist Jake Eddy.
Philadelphia native Dan Blacksberg (trombone) has created a singular musical voice as a trombonist, composer, and educator. One of the foremost practitioners of klezmer trombone and a respected voice in jazz and experimental music, Dan is known for a formidable virtuosity and versatility. This has led to performances with artists such klezmer masters as Frank London, Elaine Hoffman Watts and Adrienne Cooper, and experimentalists like Anthony Braxton and extreme doom metal band The Body. Dan composes music from danceable klezmer melodies on Radiant Others, to genre-busting projects like his Hasidic doom metal band Deveykus and Name Of the Sea, Dan forges music that “aims to infuse the fearless avant-garde with timeless sounds and techniques, and vice versa.” (WXPN’s The Key) Dan currently teaches jazz and klezmer at Temple University, and coordinates the Instrumental and Dance programs at Yiddish New York with Deb Strauss. He also makes the Radiant Others Klezmer Podcast.
Pete Rushefsky (tsimbl) is a leading performer, composer and researcher of the Jewish tsimbl (cimbalom or hammered dulcimer), Rushefsky tours and records internationally with violinist Itzhak Perlman as part of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and collaborates with a number of leading figures in the contemporary klezmer scene including Andy Statman, Adrianne Greenbaum, Steven Greenman, Joel Rubin, Eleonore Biezunski, Michael Alpert, Dan Blacksberg, Madeline Solomon, Zhenya Lopatnik, Zoe Aqua, Jake Shulman-Ment, Abigale Reisman, Keryn Kleiman, Eleonore Weill, Alex Parke, Lauren Brody, Lisa Gutkin, Matt Darriau, Raffi Boden, Alicia Svigals and Michael Winograd. Since 2006 he has served as Executive Director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, the city´s leading organization dedicated to sustaining diverse immigrant performing arts traditions. He is a founder of the annual Yiddish New York festival, curated the Yiddish program at the 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and has authored a number of articles on traditional music and culture.
YIVO
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of Eastern European Jewry worldwide. For a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our global outreach and enable us to share our vast resources. The YIVO Archives contains more than 24 million original items, and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for such study in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story