Downtown Klez Kooperative, with Yoshie Fruchter

DOWNTOWN KLEZ KOOPERATIVE: While we study and experience the amazing history and heritage that we have in klezmer, Jewish music and culture, this ensemble is an opportunity to begin writing the future. With Tzadik recording artist Yoshie Fruchter, we will explore some new compositional directions that have been taken in Jewish music by risk takers, boundary crashers, and adventurers like John Zorn, Frank London, Uri Caine, and Marc Ribot. This ensemble will try its hand at using some of the traditional themes and nuances of Jewish folk music and incorporating whatever new elements we can come up with, including but not limited to rock, jazz, metal and the avant-garde. Join us as we run Yidl’s Fidl through a sonic blender!

Yoshie Fruchter is a guitar, bass, oud player and composer whose band, Pitom (Tzadik Records) has received critical acclaim from Jazz Times magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Guitar Player Magazine and many more. The unique blend of rock, jazz, experimental and Jewish styles in his playing and composing is a defining characteristic of his music. He has toured the U.S. and Europe with Pitom and other groups, playing the Atlantique Jazz Festival in France, the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival, Sarajevo Jazz Festival and others. Following the Pitom releases, Fruchter put together a supergroup called Schizophonia and recorded an album of post-rock arrangements of cantorial recordings inspired by his grandfather, a Rabbi and Chazan. His latest project, Sandcatchers, with a frontline of oud and lap steel guitar, explores the sounds of the Middle East combined with the American South.  They released their debut on Chant records in 2017 with special guest cellist Erik Friedlander and are currently at work on their sophomore recording.Yoshie is also a sought-after freelance musician in New York City in bands ranging in style from acoustic world music to noise rock and has performed with John Zorn, Cyro Baptista, and Frank London, among many others.