Join us for our continuing series of sacred music inside B’nai Israel’s historic and awe-inspiring sanctuary.

Tonight, musical legend Andy Statman and his trio take audiences on a thrilling klezmer/jazz ride.

Had there been a planetarium in 19th-century Galicia, or a kosher deli in Depression-era Kentucky, Andy Statman's music might have been playing in the background. Meandering through time, geography, and culture, Statman and his inimitable hybrid sound move freely among the before, the after, and the present.

Andy Statman, one of his generation's premier mandolinists and clarinetists, thinks of his compositions and performances as "spontaneous American-roots music and personal, prayerful Hasidic music, by way of avant-garde jazz." This modest man takes for granted that a performer might embody several worlds in his art, and seems humbled by the fact that his music, like his story, is extraordinary.

Born in 1950 into a long line of cantors, composers, and both classical and vaudeville musicians, Statman grew up in Queens, New York. His early musical influences included klezmer records played at family gatherings, Tin Pan Alley and Broadway show tunes, his rabbi in Hebrew school singing Hasidic songs, rock and roll, big band jazz, and classical music. When Statman's older brother started bringing home bluegrass records, Statman took up the guitar and banjo, eventually switching to mandolin under the tutelage of David Grisman.

He was soon performing with local bands at multiple venues and on Sunday afternoons in Washington Square Park. At age 17 — after hearing Albert Ayler — Statman began to study saxophone, which he played in free jazz, funk, rock, and Chicago blues bands while expanding his mandolin playing in similar directions. In 1970 he joined the experimental bluegrass group, Country Cooking, followed by a stint with David Bromberg.

Still broadening his horizons, Statman took up the clarinet and studied Greek, Albanian, and Azerbaijani music. In 1975, he sought out the legendary klezmer clarinetist and National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow Dave Tarras (Andy himself was awarded an NEA Heritage Fellowship a few years back). Statman became Tarras' protégé, for whom the master wrote a number of melodies. Tarras wanted Statman to carry on his legacy, and bequeathed four of his clarinets to the younger virtuoso.

In the late 1970s Statman recorded his first albums: Jewish Klezmer Music, a recording that became a touchstone for the 1970s klezmer revival, and Flatbush Waltz, a mandolin masterpiece of post-bebop jazz improvisations and ethnically inspired original compositions.

As a clarinetist, Statman began to zero in on the sublimely ecstatic, centuries-old Hasidic melodies that lie at the heart of klezmer music — melodies that were embedded in the religious path he had come to follow. This led to his galvanizing klezmer music with the spiritually oriented jazz of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler and other musics he had explored.

Tonight, Andy will be performing with his trio.