A leading voice in the world of klezmer music and Yiddish song for over 40 years, the Klezmer Conservatory Band (KCB) directed by Hankus Netsky, continues to thrill audiences all over the world. With a repertoire ranging from Yiddish standards to rousing dance medleys and little known gems, the KCBs musicians have served as important ambassadors in promoting the universal appeal of Klezmer and Eastern European Jewish music.

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Over the years, Netsky and the band have appeared at dozens of international music festivals in major venues across the U.S.A., Europe and Australia and on ten international broadcasts of “A Prairie Home Companion.” Netsky’s original score featuring the KCB provided the musical accompaniment for “The Fool and the Flying Ship,” a 1991 video featuring Robin Williams. The band played an integral role in Joel Grey’s “Borschtcapades ’94, and performed Netsky’s original score in the much acclaimed American Repertory Theatre production, “Shlemiel the First.” Since the mid-1990s, Itzhak Perlman has featured the KCB in his PBS Great Performances video, CD, and touring project, “In the Fiddler’s House,” including concerts at Wolftrap, Great Woods, Radio City Music Hall, the Ravinia Festival, the Saratoga Music Festival, Moscow’s Barvikha Concert Hall, the Mizner Park Amphitheatre in Boca Raton, and the Mann Music Center (Philadelphia). In December of 2002, the KCB performed a concert featuring orchestral arrangements of klezmer and Yiddish vocal music with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. In 1988, world-renowned choreographer Bill T. Jones choreographed a piece based on music from their CD, “A Jumpin’ Night In the Garden of Eden” for the Boston Ballet.

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Recently, the band re-joined Maestro Perlman as an integral part of his cantorial,Hassidic, klezmer, and Yiddish folk music project, “Eternal Echoes” (with Hankus Netsky as arranger and musical director), and received rave reviews for their Sony CD release and live concert performances at venues including Boston’s Symphony Hall, Ravinia, Mizner Park, Brooklyn’s Barclay’s Center and the Hollywood Bowl. The band was prominently featured in the 2013 PBS Great Performances 40th Anniversary Gala Celebration and in 2014’s “Rejoice!,” a full-length PBS Great Performances music special.

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The bands recordings include Yiddishe Renaissance, Klez, and A Touch of Klez on the Vanguard label; Oy Chanukah, A Jumpin’ Night in the Garden of Eden, Old World Beat, Live! The Thirteenth Anniversary Album, Dancing in the Aisles, A Taste of Paradise and the highly acclaimed Dance Me to the End of Love on Rounder Records. The KCB was prominently featured in the 1988 documentary film, A Jumpin’ Night in the Garden of Eden.