Giora Feidman
Giora Feidman
The King of Klezmer
Giora Feidman is one of the most famous klezmer musicians in the world, also known as "The King of Klezmer". He plays around 150 concerts a year, 60% of them in Germany. At the beginning of the 1970s he went to New York as a soloist and conquered the stages of the world from London to Tokyo with his interpretations of klezmer. Since 1984 he has also reached the hearts of music fans in Central Europe. Feidman became known in Germany in 1984 with Peter Zadek's staging of Joshua Sobol's Holocaust play "Ghetto". He was also heard in the German movies “Jenseits der Stille” by Caroline Link and “Comedian Harmonists” (1997) by Joseph Vilsmaier. The music came in part from his wife, Ora Bat Chaim.
"I play the clarinet to share my feelings with people."
In 1985 his first LP was released in Germany, “Viva el Klezmer”. He has published over 40 CDs so far (further CD projects are currently being planned). Giora Feidman and Itzak Perlman recorded the music for Steven Spielberg's “Schindler's List”, which won an “Oscar” in 1994. In 1997 and 2003 he received the “Echo Klassik” in the category “Classical Without Borders”. In 2001 he was awarded the Federal merit award in Berlin in recognition of his special services to the reconciliation between Germans and Jews. In 2005 he was invited by Pope Benedict XVI to play on the World Youth Day in Cologne in front of more than 800,000 spectators. He now owns one of the largest and most important klezmer collections in the world.