Exploring the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archive of YIVO Sound Recordings

Join YIVO Sound Archivist Lorin Sklamberg for an online look at the holdings of one of the world’s largest repositories of audio materials pertaining to the Ashkenazic experience. This talk will feature examples from the dawn of the commercial recording industry and forward: cantorial music, theater songs, comedy routines, Yiddish radio and, of course, klezmer. In addition to presenting a virtual exhibition of one-of-a-kind artifacts (piano rolls, vintage shellac discs, vinyl lps, magnetic tape, period artwork), the talk will give insight into YIVO’s online collections of field recordings of Yiddish songs contained on its Ruth Rubin Legacy website and the newly digitized Yiddish Folksong Project.Lorin Sklamberg is a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning Yiddish-American roots band the Klezmatics. He also teaches Yiddish song from São Paulo to St. Petersburg. His newest project focuses on newly discovered Yiddish cabaret songs from Helsinki. Other recent work includes 150 Voices, a recorded collaboration with singer/instrumentalist Polina Shepherd and the members of five choirs in the UK and the United States. Since 2000, Sklamberg has served as the sound archivist of New York’s YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, for whom he has co-curated the Ruth Rubin Legacy website featuring field recordings of the renowned folklorist’s collection of some 3,000 Yiddish folk songs.