David Krakauer

Born in Manhattan in 1956, David Krakauer trained on the clarinet between New York and Paris before developing a career at the crossroads of classical, contemporary, jazz and klezmer. After studies at the Conservatoire de Paris and then Juilliard School, in the 1980s he turned toward Eastern European Jewish music, whose approach he renewed by integrating improvisation, funk, rock and electronic influences. David Krakauer joined The Klezmatics in 1988, then launched Klezmer Madness! in the mid-1990s, a central project in his musical evolution. His discography under his name includes Klezmer Madness! (1995), Klezmer, NY (1998), A New Hot One (2000), The Twelve Tribes (2001), Checkpoint - Krakauer's Ancestral Groove (2014), The Big Picture (2015) and Breath & Hammer (2020) with pianist Kathleen Tagg. David Krakauer also developed Abraham Inc. with Socalled and Fred Wesley, on terrain mixing klezmer, funk, hip-hop and contemporary groove, particularly on Tweet Tweet (2009) and Together We Stand (2019). In parallel, he plays with quartets, chamber ensembles and orchestras, and collaborates with composers such as John Zorn or Osvaldo Golijov.