Mickey Katz was a multifaceted mid 20th-century man: clarinetist, klezmer bandleader, and musical director for Spike Jones. The preeminent song parodist of the 1950s, Katz combined Yiddish lyrics and popular American standards in giddy cultural mash-ups. In 1993, jazz musician Don Byron rediscovered the music of this American pioneer and ignited klezmer’s revival with the Nonesuch album Don Byron Plays the Music of Mickey Katz. This concert tribute features nine musicians, led by multi-instrumentalist Byron, in a reunion of that album’s virtuosic ensemble.
Presented in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art