DESCRIPTION:
(Excerpted from a longer article by Michael Alpert)

German Goldenshteyn (1934-2006) was born in 1934 in Otaci, Romania (Yiddish: Otek or Notek), directly across the Dniester from Mogilev-Podilsky, Ukraine, and was raised in a Yiddish-speaking home, the youngest of four brothers. After graduating from music school in Odessa, he served in Soviet military bands and started playing Jewish weddings in Moldavia. While working as an engineer, Goldenshteyn compiled a handwritten notebook of hundreds of tunes, including rare and otherwise undocumented examples and variants of the pre-war Jewish repertoire of the region. He emigrated to Brooklyn in 1994 with his wife Mina, carrying this unique document as well as other handwritten notebooks of tunes, bringing the total number of melodies he compiled in Ukraine closer to 1000. His collection, which grew by over 200 entries after his arrival in the U.S., constitutes one of the largest hand-notated repertoire collections of any East European Jewish musician ever, and is an invaluable resource for both performers and scholars of klezmer in its European context.

Goldenshteyn became a significant figure and resource in the world of contemporary Jewish klezmer music. Upon his arrival in the United States, Goldenshteyn began to perform in New York, often with accordionist Hersh Rikelman, one of his musical partners from Mogilev. In April 1995, Goldenshteyn came to the attention of Michael Alpert, and later Jeffrey Wollock, who worked to present him at concerts and workshops throughout North America and Europe. A CD, "German Goldenshteyn: A Living Tradition" was produced by clarinetist Alex Kontorovich for Living Traditions in 2006, and several manuscript books have been published by Goldenshteyn himself as well as by Living Traditions. Goldenshteyn died in 2006 of a heart attack. He is survived by his wife, MIna, their daughter Klava Rozentul, and a grandson, Alex, who live in Brooklyn. His nephew, Arkady Goldenshteyn is a klezmer clarinetist in Israel, and Arkady's son Naum (also a clarinetist) has recently moved to New York City and worked with CTMD to found a project to disseminate and perform the Goldenshteyn-family repertoire.

Treasures of the CTMD Archive features rare, one-of-a-kind video of leading masters of immigrant music and dance traditions that have been recently digitized from our Archive. Most of the artists presented in this series are (or were) based in the New York metropolitan area. Sadly, a number of these masters are no longer with us, and so the CTMD Archive provides vital, and sometimes singular, documentation of their artistry and traditions.

To view the entire series go to www.ctmd.org/archives.htmer with us, and so the CTMD Archive provides vital, and sometimes singular, documentation of their artistry and traditions.

To view the entire series go to http://www.ctmd.org/archives.htm