HOW DO YOU GET TO
CARNEGIE HALL?

 
I was on stage at Severance Hall (home of the Cleveland Orchestra) this month. My first time. Then I got kicked off.

I was at an Itzhak Perlman concert, featuring klezmer music. One of Perlman’s sidemen told me to come on stage post-show to chat. He was packing up his tsimbl. Then a security guard shooed me off. No biggie. I’ve played Severance Hall before.

The Severance Hall lobby. For a wedding.

Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player, Alan Douglass, has played Carnegie Hall.

The Carnegie Hall Cinema. Alan accompanied Laurel and Hardy shorts at the Carnegie Hall Cinema in 1985. Alan was in the Kleveland Klezmorim at the time.

At Severance Hall, there was a line backstage to talk to Perlman. I was more interested in connecting with Perlman’s sidemen. These sidemen are my heroes. For instance,  Perlman’s klez-music director, Hankus Netsky, has influenced me, for the better, for the past 37 years. I first ran into Hankus at KlezKamp (the late, great, annual Catskills-based klez convention). Hankus was on staff at KlezKamp, and I was a student. KlezKamp was a little “scene” — a veltele. There were nametags, workshops, break-out sessions, dance concerts.

Perlman’s Cleveland concert was sold out. Half the audience, it seemed, was there to see Perlman-the-classical-violinist and didn’t realize the show was going to be hardcore klez. Perlman’s sidemen were Pete Rushefsky, Andy Statman, Ilene Stahl, Judy Bressler, Lorin Sklamberg, Michael Alpert, Frank London, Jim Guttman and Netsky, among others.

I told clarinetist Andy Statman that I occasionally play his evocative “Song of Redemption,” and I told bassist Jim Guttman about a KlezKamp photo he and I are in from 1987. Guttman is in a lot of KlezKamp photos. Doubt he was interested in my pic.

Guttman once told me his favorite gigs are nursing homes because the audiences are so appreciative. Great. (I play my share of nursing homes.)

How do you get to Severance Hall?

The Severance Hall stage.

Go to a klezmer convention. Here’s my badge:

—

Henry Sapoznik and Adrienne Cooper founded KlezKamp, which ran from 1985 to 2015. My family attended about 10 of these gatherings.

Greg Selker started the Kleveland Klezmorim in 1983. My wife, Alice, encouraged me to attend  Greg’s klez workshop at the Cleveland Heights JCC in 1987. Greg had met Hankus Netsky and trumpeter Frank London at the New England Conversatory.

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