About the Breslov Bar Band

From melancholy midnight meditations to funky/punky affirmations of the One, the Breslov Bar Band explores musical expressions of the Breslov Chassidim from the traditional to the contemporary.

Blending Klezmer/Hassidic music with Middle-Eastern, Rock, Jazz, Reggae, Punk, and other musical styles in an organic manner, the band puts on a high-energy show that is both visually and musically compelling. Members are powerful improvisers and no two performances are alike. In addition to keyboards and vocals, BBB bandleader Binyomin Ginzberg plays the vibrandoneon -- a mouth blown variation on the Argentinian bandoneon -- which adds an intriguingly exotic component to the group's sound.

About the Guys in the Band

Binyomin Ginzberg

Binyomin Ginzberg

Binyomin Ginzberg has been called “one of the most interesting and engaging musicians in Jewish music today” (Teruah-Jewish Music). The musical director of JewishMusician.com, he has played with numerous Jewish music artists in the traditional and New Jewish music scenes. He is an in-demand keyboardist, vocalist, and bandleader on the NY Simcha circuit and has taught Chassidic music at KlezKamp, Yiddish Summer Weimar, and the Rising Song Institute Winter Intensive. He has also lectured and given workshops for programs including Yiddish New York, the London International Klezmer Experience, and the Klezmer Arts Institute of Los Angeles.

Binyomin produced and performed the Chassidic music for the wedding and Mitsve Tants scenes in the 2020 Emmy-winning Netflix series Unorthodox, and recently published his first book of musical transcriptions, The Music of the Mitsve Tants in the Courts of the Hasidic Rebbes: 159 Hasidic Dance Melodies. The Breslov Bar Band is his outlet for exploring Breslov music in all its myriad forms.

Michael Winograd

Michael Winograd

Clarinetist Michael Winograd lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is a performer and composer of Klezmer, Eastern European Jewish wedding and celebration music. He performs internationally with his band the Honorable Mentshn, and plays regularly with today's premier klezmer musicians. Michael has shared the stage with Itzhak Perlman, the Klezmer Conservatory Band, Frank London, Budowitz and countless others. He is a member of Pneuma Quartet, and co-founded Sandaraa along with Pakistani superstar Zeb Bangash. In 2016, Michael recorded the opening track for Vulfpeck's LP The Beautiful Game, and has since been a regular guest with them in concert, including a sold-out show and live recording at Madison Square Garden in 2019. Michael is a founder of the Yiddish New York festival, now embarking on its 6th year, and served as Artistic Director of KlezKanada from 2016-2021. www.michaelwinograd.net

Jessica Lurie

Jessica Lurie

Jessica Lurie is a multi-instrumentalist performer, composer, producer, and teaching and recording artist. She leads her own Ensemble, and co-leads the Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums, Living Daylights, Sofie Salonika, Freethiopiques and Slingshot duo. A Sundance Composers’ Fellow and Downbeat’s 2021 “Rising Star for Alto Sax,” Jessica has released eight solo albums, fourteen albums with The Tiptons, and five albums with Living Daylights as a member & lead composer, receiving critical acclaim in Billboard, Downbeat, NYTimes, Jazz Times, All About Jazz, Seattle Stranger, LA Weekly, Earshot Jazz, and national and international radio. Recent performances and/or recordings include artists such as Taylor Mac, John Zorn, Devotchka, Sleater Kinney, Helen Gillet, Fred Frith, Bill Frisell, Henry Butler, Indigo Girls, Mark Ribot, Frank London, Zion80, Allison Miller, and Nels Cline of Wilco, among others. Her newest release Long Haul (2018) is out on Chant Records. www.jessicalurie.com

Allen Watsky

Allen Watsky

Allen Watsky is a guitarist with broad experience in all styles of music, starting with pop and blues as a kid, and jazz and funk in his late teens, with a bit of old-time country thrown in for flavor. He then toured the western USA with regional R&B and funk bands and studied classical and Flamenco styles at the Mannes College.

Allen has spent the last few years traveling the globe with David Krakauer, SoCalled, and Fred Wesley, performing on tour and recordings with their funk klezmer project Abraham Inc. His recent musical explorations have infused his playing with a Mediterranean flavor and Middle Eastern rhythmic textures, while staying true to his American roots. His participation in the Breslov Bar Band is an extension of his interest and appreciation of Hasidic music in general and Breslov music in particular.

Yoshie Fruchter

Yoshie Fruchter

Yoshie grew up in a musical family and began playing the guitar at age thirteen. Though he was spending most of his time transcribing Jimmy Page solos and listening to Nirvana, he got his first gig playing with his father's wedding band. After spending a year studying at a Jewish seminary in Israel and playing on street corners for shekels, he began school at the University of Maryland, where he studied guitar and took lessons with faculty guitarist Gerry Kunkel and area jazz guitarist Paul Wingo. While in college, Yoshie became involved in a number of musical projects including Juez, a rabble rousing avante-Klezmer group that traveled all the way to Moscow to showcase their shenanigans; Bellflur, an ambient post-rock group heavily influenced by bands like Radiohead and Pink Floyd; and M-Theory, a jazz/fusion quintet with some of Yoshie's compatriots at school.

Today, Yoshie freelances around the New York area on guitar and bass, playing with groups like the Eitan Katz Band, Zion80, Soulfarm, Chana Rothman, Yiddish Princess, and the Breslov Bar Band. A student of the Armenian American oud virtuoso Ara Dinkjian, Yoshie is the bandleader and oud player for his Middle Eastern/Americana fusion band, Sandcatchers, which has been described as “oud meets lap steel.” His band Pitom, which plays music he has dubbed "punkassjewjazz," has released several albums on the Tzadik label, and Yoshie has also recorded an album of cantorial music titled Schizophonia that resets cantorial classics into rock masterpieces full of sonic texture, deep grooves and heavy riffing. www.yoshiefruchtermusic.com

Richard Huntley

Rich Huntley

Percussionist Richard Huntley plays a wide variety of music including jazz, Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, klezmer, and other styles. He has performed and/or recorded with jazz greats such as John Benitez, Ron Blake, Luis Bonilla, Cameron Brown, George Coleman, Harold Mabern, Mulgrew Miller, Esperanza Spaulding and Fred Wesley. For over 20 years he has played with Brazilian piano legend and samba funk innovator Dom Salvador. Other musical associations include singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant, New York bordello blues band Hazmat Modine, and globe-trotting collaborations with the Gangbe Brass Band from Benin, the Tuvan throat singing groups Huun Hur Tu and Alash, and the Toureg guitarist and singer Bombino.

Recent recordings include “The Art of The Hang,” a piano trio with pianist Nikolaj Hess and bassist Cameron Brown; “You,” a collaborative trio with guitarist Niklas Winter (Finland) and Emil Hess (Denmark); “Evolution Stores,” a nonet recording by Emil Hess; and a cast recording of the musical This Beautiful City by the late Michael Friedman. He is a faculty member at the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin and holds an M.M. from The Manhattan School of Music, where he was on the faculty for 12 years. He has also conducted clinics at various music schools and universities in Denmark and Japan. www.rlhuntley.com