The Klez Dispensers

An explosive force of collective creativity, The Klez Dispensers’ music is remaking what American klezmer is, has been, and can be. Having revived and mastered American klezmer music from their study of the New World’s klezmer legends, most notably Dave Tarras, the band is now forging new directions, riffing on the klezmer’s jazz undercurrents to stir up a stunning variety of fresh klezmer sounds. While they sometimes push klezmer beyond its typical boundaries, they are really journeying further inside klezmer and discovering its latent possibilities - the melodies, harmonies, rhythms, and influences that were always there - which waited long enough to be explored. This is new music that feels familiar, possessing as it does the integrity of the old, but which you have definitely not heard before, for reaching forward is sometimes reaching back. Individually, each Dispensers is an accomplished musician contributing skill and artistry to the group. They are classically trained, ready to take on Mahler, Bartok, and Gershwin; they are formidable jazz improvisers, raised on Ellington, Monk, and Coltrane; together they are klezmorim with many musical stories to tell. ------------------------------------------------------------ --- The band has played the Montreal Jazz Festival, Cape May Music festival, Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park, Brooklyn's Prospect Park, street celebrations in Manhattan, Kansas City, and Princeton (our home), and New York clubs such as Satalla, Makor, Tonic, and CBGB’s, festival, and lent their joyful noise to countless celebrations. The opening track of their most recent album “New Jersey Freylekhs” (available at www.cdbaby.com/cd/klez) was included on the compilation “Celebrate Klezmer.”They are currently working on a new recording, which will hopefully come out in the spring. This record features our vocalist, Susan Watts, singing lush and groovy arrangements of the Yiddish standards and some wild original compositions.