will give a unique performance of
at White Horse Black Mountain
this coming
February 14th
at 4pm.
Statman is widely recognized by his peers as one of the musicians at the forefront of the klezmer revival of the late 1970s and early ‘80s.
In discovering this instrumental music – the origins of klezmer can be traced to devotional traditions extending back to Biblical times – Statman merged his musical life with the discovery of his spiritual life as a Hasidic Jew.
For more than four decades, Statman has explored and ultimately mastered a multitude of musical genres. As a teenager growing up in New York, he studied bluegrass mandolin with David Grisman. As his interests turned toward the music of John Coltrane, he was mentored by jazz saxophone virtuoso Richard Grando.
Dave Tarras, a popular klezmer musician in the Ukraine who later immigrated to 
America, taught Statman how to play clarinet. He has appeared on recordings by Stephene Grappelli, Béla Fleck and David Bromberg. Violinist and admirer Itzhak Perlman selected Statman to record with him on a series of klezmer-inspired albums and videos including In the Fiddler’s House, which was released in 1996.
Joining Statman onstage will be percussionist Larry Eagle and bass player Jim Whitney.
"There are those who know Andy Statman as the virtuoso klezmer clarinetist - violinist Itzhak Perlman, for instance, who 
chose Statman to lead his klezmer album. There are those who know Andy Statman as the down-home mandolin player with a stack of straight-up bluegrass albums to his credit. (I)n Statman's versatile hands is a music that's full of surprises, sophisticated and completely accessible at once." -- The New York Daily News
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 backgroundeandering through time, geography and culture in a few passionate, organic gusts of music, neither the man nor his inimitable hybrid sound has a very clearly defined "before" or "after."Statman, one of his generation's premier mandolinists and clarinetists thinks of his compositions as "a spontaneous, American-roots form of very personal, prayerful hasidic music, by way of avant-garde jazz."
This small, modest man takes for granted that a performer might embody several worlds in his art, and seems not to recognize that his music, like his story, is extraordinary. "...(A) beautiful and new experience. It has the heart of klezmer music, which Mr. Statman, a clarinet and mandolin virtuoso, is most famous for performing, but it's not klezmer. It has the spirit of the border-pushing jazz of the 60's, but it's not really jazz either. It's the music of Jewish mystics, but interpreted not as a tradition to be preserved but as a spiritual path to be followed in as personal a manner as possible." -- The New York Times
It's a are treat to have someone of Andy Statman's stature come to Black Mountain. Come out for this special 4:00pm Sunday Concert from one of the countries true masters. Tickets are only $10
