Michael Winograd Plays TANZ! in CR5

Summary

Podcast Summary: All Of It – Michael Winograd Plays TANZ! in CR5

Host: Tiffany Hansen (in for Alison Stewart)
Guest: Michael Winograd (clarinetist & composer) and band
Date: December 18, 2025
Theme: Revisiting and performing the influential 1956 album "Tanz"—a klezmer dance music landmark—with discussion of Jewish musical heritage, the klezmer revival, and how dance music underpins communal experience.

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Episode Overview

This episode brings renowned clarinetist and composer Michael Winograd and his ensemble into the studio for a discussion and live performance centered around the reimagining of "Tanz," a 1956 klezmer album. Exploring its place in American and Jewish cultural history, the conversation delves into the origins, social function, and legacy of klezmer music, the process and purpose behind reviving "Tanz" live, and the ongoing cyclical revivals of this vibrant tradition.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Meaning and Essence of "Tanz" — Dance as Culture

• [00:09] The episode opens with context: "Tanz," meaning "dance" in Yiddish, was not a concert album at its inception but music designed for social gatherings.
• [05:32] Winograd emphasizes, “Klezmer music. It’s dance music. It’s great Yiddish dance music.”
• The host notes how dance threads through musical traditions, persisting across generations, and Winograd elaborates:
  “So it was what brought communities together and... defined the social ways of the people that it came from.” [06:28]
• Klezmer as social music—its roots are in weddings, coming-of-age ceremonies, not formal concerts.

2. How to Define Klezmer

• [07:12] Is klezmer just dance music? Winograd explains there are subgenres, but, “The dance music is what really is at its essence... made to get people up and moving together.”

3. Is Klezmer “Jewish Jazz”?

• Host references Winograd’s article headline, Klezmer Jewish Jazz? Not really, but sometimes [07:30]
• [07:51] Winograd discusses clarinetist Dave Tarras—frequently called the “Jewish Benny Goodman”—as a bridge between the genres:
  “A lot of people would say that, you know, that klezmer was kind of Jewish jazz.”
• The term, he notes, is “maybe a way to describe the music” for new listeners, but doesn’t capture its true essence.

4. Why Re-create “Tanz”—Not Just as an Album, But as a Concert Experience

• [08:49] Winograd on motivation:
  “To me, the idea that it’s not just recreated as an album, it’s more recreated as a concert experience. That was the part that was exciting... the music in its time was never performed in full... So this is an opportunity to play this music as it’s presented on the album in a concert setting, which I think is pretty exciting.”
• The album was important to later klezmer musicians, though it was little-known at the time.

5. The American-ness of “Tanz”

• “I think that this album really is the American klezmer album... it was a meeting of worlds and a meeting of sounds and a meeting of musical and cultural experience.” [10:24]
• Sam Musicer embodied both traditions, as a Jewish musician and as a jazz player.

6. Collaboration and First Encounters

• Winograd interviewed Ray Musicer (original album contributor, Sam’s younger brother):
  “He gave me all sorts of stories and tidbits about it...” [11:04]
• Band introduced: Eileen Stahl (clarinet), Andy Kataskas (saxophone/bass clarinet), Ani Kistlinger (trumpet), Josh Dolgan (piano), Will Holzhauser (accordion), Zoe Giggenau (bass), David Licht (drums). [15:35]

7. Discovery and the Process of Transcribing “Tanz”

• First heard the album in his teens from a CD passed on by Jim Gutman; he was “blown away.” [16:06]
• The transcription project began during a snowstorm, driven by curiosity and influence—not by commission or pandemic.
  “A couple months later, the transcription project turned into a live concert.” [17:10]

8. The Klezmer Revival(s)

• Original 1956 release “not so much” a hit; rediscovered in the 1980s by new generations [18:05]
• [18:35] Winograd on the ‘klezmer revival:’ “The klezmer revival, a renewal in interest in music, started around the late 70s… when they found this album, they realized it was like a pinnacle moment in the music.”
• Young Jews in the 1980s sought connection to their culture and were drawn to klezmer.
• Are we in a new revival? There are “chapters... waves of the revival.” [19:42]

9. Re-creation vs. Re-imagining

• Asked if the 2025 performance would sound very different from 1956:
  “We weren't recreate—we weren't—we were trying to recreate it, not reimagine it. So... we want it to sound true to the original and then also sound like ourselves.” [20:47]

10. Is It Hanukkah Music?

• Host jokes that because it’s the fifth night of Hanukkah, it’s Hanukkah music.
  “Is this Hanukkah music?”—“Sure, of course it is. What’s not Hanukkah music?” (Winograd, [21:16])*
• Klezmer as a celebration soundtrack for all festive occasions.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Klezmer as Social Glue:
  “This was dance music, of course. This was a version of the dance music that was made into a programmatic record in the mid-50s. But traditionally the music was played for dancing at social events, at weddings, and at coming of age ceremonies... it’s what brought communities together...”
  – Michael Winograd [06:28]

• On Jewish Jazz:
  “He was labeled the Jewish Benny Goodman, which is pretty funny... a lot of people would say that... klezmer was kind of Jewish jazz.”
  – Michael Winograd [07:51]

• On Motivation for Transcribing:
  “I just kind of wanted to learn what was... I knew that this was very influential on me, and I found myself, you know, taking ideas from it over the years. And so I think figured it'd be a good idea to really learn it as best as I could.”
  – Michael Winograd [17:39]

• On ‘Revival’ versus ‘Renaissance’
  *“I feel like there’s been chapters... waves of the revival.”
  – Michael Winograd [19:47]

• On Fidelity to the Original:
  “We weren’t recreate—we weren’t—we were trying to recreate it, not reimagine it. So I think that... we want it to sound true to the original and then also sound like ourselves.”
  – Michael Winograd [20:47]

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Timestamps for Music & Segments

• [01:24–04:55] Opening Performance: "Romania"
• [11:40–15:19] Second Performance: "Der Neier Doiner" (Sam Musicer composition)
• [22:33–26:53] Closing Performance: "Sam’s Bulgar" (Sam Musicer)

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In the Studio: Light, Inclusive Tone

• The episode features a warm, community-focused atmosphere—Winograd gently teases the band about meeting each other, jokes about whether music is “Hanukkah music,” and the host and guest riff on the role of the internet as an arbiter of truth.
• The musicianship and camaraderie are palpable, with Tiffany Hansen as an enthusiastic, upbeat surrogate for the audience’s curiosity.

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Conclusion

This lively episode celebrates the ongoing life of klezmer music as both a historical artifact and a living, breathing force in contemporary culture. Michael Winograd’s revival of the "Tanz" album embodies the balancing act between fidelity to the past and authenticity in the present, reinforcing the power of dance and music to unite and sustain community across generations.

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To experience the music and the nuanced interplay of tradition and renewal, listen to Michael Winograd and his band’s celebratory renditions peppered throughout the episode.

Transcript

[A]

This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. In 1956, an album called Tans, the Yiddish word for dance, was released by a Ukrainian born clarinet player with his son in law serving as its music director. And the album had a relatively small release. At the time, the heyday of klezmer music was coming to an end as commercial radio was favoring newer fare. But in the decades that follow, tons blend of traditional styles with big band jazz arrangements came to be seen not just as the end of an era, but as sort of a prescient document of adaptation revival. Those later fans of the album include our next guest, Michael Winograd, the clarinetist and composer who just released Michael Winograd Plays Tanz live in New York City. He and his band will be performing tonight at the center for Jewish Culture. Culture. But first, they're here with us. Welcome to all of it, all of you. Michael, I have a question. Did I say Tanzright? Am I saying I did pretty.

[B]

Pretty good?

[A]

Pretty good. Okay. All right, I'll take pretty good. You know what? I think we should just probably start with some music and then we'll talk.

[B]

Sounds good.

[A]

All right.

[B]

All right. One, two, one, two. Ram. Sam.

[A]

That was Romania. Did I say that right? Romania. Romania. And that voice you just heard is Michael Winograd. His band here with us, they are performing tonight at the center for Jewish Culture. I mentioned, Michael, that the album up top here is called Tanz, Tanz, which means dance. Why is it important for listeners to know the meaning of that word when they're thinking about. I mean, look, I'm sitting here bouncing up and down in my seat. This is dance music. This is dance music, isn't it?

[B]

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. Klezmer music. It's dance music. It's great Yiddish dance music.

[A]

You know, it immediately made me think about the history of dance music and how so much of our music that comes to us passed down. You know, like, let's think about classical music, for example, right? Like all of those Schubert, you know, the leader were songs, there were dances. What is it about dance that you think is so unique to the human experience that we have to pass it down in our music for generation and generation and generation?

[B]

Well, it's social culture, you know, this music, klezmer music served as social in social context, was dance music. So it wasn't concert music. It wasn't.

[A]

Wait, we're at all sitting around clutching our pearls.

[B]

Yeah, you weren't, you know, putting on your best and going out to the concert hall to hear this. This was dance music, of course. This was a version of the dance music that was made into a programmatic record in the mid-50s. But traditionally the music was played for dancing at social events, at weddings, and at coming of age ceremonies and things like that. So it was what brought communities together and it's what ultimately was, you know, signifiers of community dynamics and. And kind of defined the social. The social ways of the. Of the people that it came from.

[A]

If people aren't familiar with klezmer music, is dance really the best way you would categorize it or is there another way you would describe it for somebody who.

[B]

Well, there are non dance sub genres within what's called klezmer music. But the dance, the dance music is what. What really is at its essence. So this was music that was made to get people up and moving together.

[A]

You wrote an article for All About Jazz with the headline Klezmer Jewish Jazz question mark. Not really, but sometimes. All right, explain yourself.

[B]

Ooh, when did I write that article?

[A]

When did you write that? I don't know. The Internet told us.

[B]

Oh, and the Internet never lies.

[A]

Never lies. Is it Jewish jazz?

[B]

Well, the reason why I think that that title came to be is. So the clarinetist, one of the clarinetists that's featured on this album is a guy named Dave Terrace. And he was kind of the king of klezmer. He's a really all star recording artist. Started his first recordings in the United States around 1926 or 1927. His last recording was in the late 70s. So he has a large collection of music available. And he was called, he was labeled the Jewish Benny Goodman, which is pretty funny.

[A]

I mean, it's kind of funny.

[B]

And a lot of people would say that, you know, that klezmer was kind of Jewish jazz. So I think it's a way that people maybe described the music. So I kind of took that as a way in to write about klezmer for All About Jazz.

[A]

So talk to us about this album. So why remake this album?

[B]

I love this album and this album has been very influential on me. And many people who play klezmer music for the last 30, 30 plus years have been very inspired by this album. To me, the idea that it's not just recreated as an album, it's more recreated as a concert experience. That was the part that was exciting to me because the music in its time was never performed in full. It was never performed from beginning to end or even in these arrangements. So this is an opportunity to play this music as it's presented on the album in a concert setting, which I think is pretty exciting.

[A]

Was it an historic album at the time?

[B]

At the time, not so much. I think it was. It was pretty epic. And I don't say that just because it was on Epic Records, but I think that it was a real landmark. People didn't have the opportunity to hear it so much at the time that it came out, because audiences that had or were listening to Jewish music were very assimilated Jews in the United States, and they were listening to the Platters and Rosemary Clooney and Elvis Presley. At the time, they were not listening to Jewish and Yiddish records as much as they had been in previous decades. So when they made the album, people weren't flocking to the record stores to get it. However, I do believe that it was. It was a pretty landmark creation.

[A]

It just made me think, you know, you mentioned that Jewish people in the. In the United States listening to this. Do you think there is something uniquely American about it at all?

[B]

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that this album really is the. Is the American klezmer album. You know, the. The other clarinetist on there who's, you know, was the brainchild behind it is Sam Musicer, who had two lives as a musician. He was both a great klezmer and Jewish musician, and he also was a great jazz player. He was in the Gene Krupa Orchestra, and he recorded with Sarah Vaughan, amongst other people. So this was a meeting of worlds and a meeting of sounds and a meeting of musical and cultural experience.

[A]

There are musicer brothers that are credited with this album right along with. Is it Dave Terrace?

[B]

Dave Terrace. And this featured Dave Terrace and Sam Musicer, but his younger brother, Ray Musicer, also played tenor saxophone and clarinet on this record, and he's still around today. And we. I actually got together with him the week before we made this concert recording and interviewed him about the. The record. And he gave me all sorts of stories and tidbits about it that was really great.

[A]

Was he like, don't screw it up?

[B]

You know, he's a very, very sweet guy. He wouldn't say that to me, but if he thought it, I wouldn't put it. I wouldn't blame him.

[A]

All right, we got to stop talking and hear some more music, I think. So tell us what we're going to hear here.

[B]

Okay, so we're going to hear one of Sam Musicr's compositions. This is Der Neier Doiner. It's a really beautiful piece. All right. Oh, and.

[A]

That is Michael Winograd and his band, they are performing tonight. Michael Winograd plays Tons live in New York City at the center for Jewish Culture, and they're with us now. Michael, I feel like you should probably introduce your band now since I keep talking about them all.

[B]

Yeah, it'd be great if they could meet each other. I have Eileen Stahl over here on clarinet, and Andy Kataskas on the saxophone and bass clarinet. Ani Kistlinger on trumpets. Josh Dolgan on the piano, Will Holzhauser on the accordion, Zoe Giggenau on the bass. And of course, from the great state of New Jersey, that's David Licht on the drums.

[A]

All right, welcome, everyone. Thank you. Michael, tell me about the first time you heard that Taunts album that we've been talking about.

[B]

Yeah, okay, So I believe the first time that I heard taunts was around 1999 or 2000. And it was before it was reissued. It was reissued around 2000, but right before then, a musician named Jim Gutman, a bass player from Boston, who we actually saw at our show last night, he gave me a copy of it, a digitized copy on cd. And my teenage mind was blown. Really, really amazing to hear this kind of playing, this kind of energy, and such a great recording quality. So I was. I was. I was shook and taken, you know.

[A]

And not as much. So much that you decided to transcribe all of this for all of these instruments and. I mean, because there's not like, sheet music flopping around for all of this stuff, right? This was a big undertaking on your part.

[B]

Yeah, it was. I was a snowstorm, and I was stuck inside, and I figured this would be a really good activity to do. That's how it started. And so I started writing.

[A]

Sounds like Covid. A lot of stuff like that happened during COVID too, right?

[B]

Yeah. Only this was before then. Yeah, right. This was on. Yeah, I don't have that excuse for this. This was just me needing to do it. And so I started working on it. And, you know, it's a really well recorded album from that era, but still, it took some time to hear some of the inner voices. And then, you know, a couple months later, the transcription project turned into a live concert.

[A]

Did you have that in mind when you started?

[B]

I did not, no. I just kind of wanted to learn what was. I knew that this was very influential on me, and I found myself, you know, taking ideas from it over the years. And so I think figured it'd be a good idea to. To really learn it as best as I could. So I was writing out each of the parts.

[A]

So the album came out in 1956. How was it received at the time?

[B]

Well, from, you know, not many people heard it so hard to say. I would hope that the people who did hear it really liked it. It was on Epic Records, which was pretty significant, you know, for a klezmer record like this. But really, people didn't hear it until the late 1980s, when a younger generation of musicians discovered the album.

[A]

You know, what do you credit that with that sort of like reawakening the klezmer revival?

[B]

The klezmer revival, a renewal in interest in music, started around the late 70s, and musicians were craving this kind of music and this cultural representation of music. And when they found this album, they realized it was like a pinnacle moment in the music.

[A]

What about the young people of the 80s, do you think brought them back to klezmer music, or was it just time?

[B]

Time and circumstance. I think that young Jews then were searching for their identity and their connection to their own culture and history. And I think that especially in different music communities, people were interested in hearing sounds that they either were unfamiliar with or that seemed distant to them. And so I think there was a number of things that came together that it kind of, you know, sparked the klezmer revival.

[A]

Are we in another revival, or has it just sort of been happening since the 80s?

[B]

I don't know. What do you all think? I don't know. I feel like there's been chapters.

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

New revival. David Licht over there behind the drum says new revival. I don't know. I think there's been chapters. There's been chapters of the revival, waves of the revival.

[A]

It's a renaissance.

[B]

Is it? I don't know. We have. No, we don't have a great answer for you, but we appreciate the question.

[A]

I'm sensing that does 2025, what you're doing here, does it sound significantly different than if I were in some venue hearing this in 1956, would I recognize it as the same thing?

[B]

We are aiming for it to sound pretty similar, but we also sound like we sound. So, you know, a lot of people say one foot in the past, one foot in the present. And I think that that's. That's really, you know, defines this project that we're working on. But I think it sounds pretty similar to how it sounded. You know, I think.

[A]

Was that the goal? It wasn't like, I'm going to put my stamp on this.

[B]

It was. We weren't recreate. We weren't we were trying to recreate it, not reimagine it. So I think that it's. I think we want it to sound true to the original and then also sound like ourselves.

[A]

So it's the fifth night of Hanukkah.

[B]

Is that true?

[A]

Is that a true statement? Okay, it is. I have said it, so it is.

[B]

So does it say so on the Internet?

[A]

It says so is this Hanukkah music?

[B]

Sure, of course it is. What's not Hanukkah music?

[A]

But you said it's sort of like. Right, but you said it's sort of like, you know, it's my, what, my kids are getting married music. It's my birthday music. Is it just that celebratory for any kind of.

[B]

Well, okay. Many great klezmer musicians who've come before me, many of my contemporaries, and I would assume those who follow me when playing klezmer concerts at this time of year, often say things when they are selling their merchandise. That sounds like, remember, it makes great Hanukkah gifts. And so for me. For me, that's a signifier. I think this is Hanukkah music because I listen to this music during Hanukkah and not during Hanukkah, so.

[A]

Well, there you have it.

[B]

There you have it.

[A]

All right. That is Michael Winograd just released. Michael Winograd plays Tanz Live in New York City. He and his band are playing tonight at the center for New Jewish Culture. What time does that start?

[B]

I think doors are at 7:30. Doors are at 7:30 and the concert's at 8.

[A]

All right, sounds good. I think we should. Michael, I think we should head out on some music here.

[B]

You got it.

[A]

What are we gonna hear?

[B]

Sam's Bulgar, another great composition from Sam Musicer. Should we do it? Yeah. All right.

[A]

Thanks, everybody.

[B]

Okay, thank you. One, two, one.

[A]

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