The Jewish/Yiddish Sounds of Philadelphia

Hankus Netsky returns to Middletown and Wesleyan University this evening (sorry for the late notice) to kick off the "The Yiddish Cultural Expressions" series.  The 4-part series (other presentations take place on 2/22, 3/29, and 4/05) opens at 7 p.m. in the CFA Hall (the former CFA Cinema) with Netsky, founder of the ground-breaking Klezmer Conservatory Band (the group he founded in 1980), delivering a talk titled "The Philadelphia Klezmer Story", a subject he's been studying most of his adult life and what he based his Ph.D dissertation on, the degree he earned at Wesleyan.  

Netsky has had a busy full career - besides his performances with the KCB, he also serves as research director of the Klezmer Conservatory Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to research in and perpetuation of Yiddish music. He has taught Yiddish Music at Hebrew College, New England Conservatory, and Wesleyan University and lectures extensively on the subject in the US., Canada, and Europe. Film credits include The Fool and the Flying Ship, a Rabbit Ears children’s video narrated by Robin Williams, The Forward From Immigrants to Americans, and The Double Burden: Three Generations of Working Women. He adapted and composed the score to the musical Shlemiel the First (produced by the American Repertory Theater and American Music Theater Festival) and composed the incidental music for the NPR radio series, Jewish Stories From Eastern Europe and Beyond (produced by the National Yiddish Book Center). 

For more information and the listing for the rest of the events in the series, go to http://jis.blogs.wesleyan.edu.