*Art of Klezmer musicians licenced by Klezwest from Leon Zernitsky
Jam Together
Join a jam to play together and learn by ear (some sheet music provided).
Develop Skills
Participate in instrumental and dance workshops throughout the year to hone your skills.
Accompany Dance
Klezmer has always been music for dancing! We perform for dancers at jams and events.
Learn & Play Klezmer Music in Vancouver
KlezWest is an informal group of musicians, dancers, Yiddish speakers and friends who love to explore, play and dance to Klezmer music. We meet monthly to learn songs together, practice different kinds of Yiddish dance, and connect.
Started in 2022 by David Kauffman, the klezjam is a unique space where seasoned musicians and players of different instruments, as well as newcomers to the klezmer tradition, can immerse ourselves in Jewish folk music. We learn tuned from different eras, regions, and styles like bulgars, freylekhs, and horas, and create new culture together!
Since 2025, KlezWest found a new home at the Peretz Centre. One of the unique features of klezmer music is its deep connection to the tradition of Yiddish dance, which is the quintessential part of every simkhe (celebration). In this, the Peretz Centre is lucky to have a group of musicians who have accompanied communal celebrations and programs such as Yiddish in Motion dance class and tantzhoyz, the 2025 Peacenik Khanike party, the 2026 Pnei Mitzvah graduation, and the Peretz Centre's 80th anniversary gala.
What is Klezmer Music?
We think of Klezmer music as the wedding music of Eastern European Jews, which it is. But Klezmer music is not really one genre of music. It is a collection of genres that Ashkenazic Jews picked up along their migrations from Germany to Poland, to Ottoman Borderlands and then to America, and performed according to their own tastes. When we play it or dance to it, we can find a deep, rich, and diverse culture which contains all of these elements it picked up along the way: a Polish krakowiak, a Romanian hora, an instrumental take on a Sabbath melody.
Most of our knowledge of Klezmer music from New York in the early-to-mid 20th century, when thousands of immigrant Jewish musicians arrived in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and found a dynamic new Jewish society eager to hear sounds of the old world. In Jews Without Money (1930) by Michael Gold, a semi-autobiographical novel about growing up in the Lower East Side, the protagonist, an American-born boy, was brought to Joseph Moskowitz's restaurant to hear live Klezmer music:
I could not take my eyes off the gleaming bald head of Moscowitz, the musician.
"Pop, what song is he playing now?" I asked.
"Don't you know?" my father asked in real surprise.
"No."
"Yi! yi! yi!" my father sighed, sentimentally. "I see, Mechel, you have really become an American. That is the song, Mechel, the shepherds play on their flutes in Roumania when they are watching the sheep. It is a doina. How many summer days have I heard it in the fields!"
"It is better than your American ragtime," said Mottke severely. "It is music-not this pah-pah-pah ragtime."
"Music of the soul," said my father sentimentally.
"Certainly," Mottke agreed.
A century later, there is another layer of nostalgia to this music. The world it came from is gone, and so are the people who remembered it. But since the Klezmer Revival of the late 1970s, several new generations have returned to playing this music and making it their own. At KlezWest, we are a part of this wider international scene of people learning, playing and dancing this music. We hope you will consider joining us!
— Daniel Carkner
KlezWest Workshops & Performances
Klezwest offers Klezmer workshops through the year, a great opportunity to dive deeper into Klezmer history and performance.
Join the Next KlezWest KlezJam!
Calling all klezmer musicians and the klezmer-kurious!
Our monthly klezmer jam is open to klezmer beginners, intermediate, and advanced klezmer players. All klezmer instruments and musicians are welcome to join!
Learning Resources for Klezmer Musicians
The online resources are offered as starting points for learning more about klezmer and Yiddish music, and for accessing archival materials.
Klezmer Music Archives
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Klezmer Blogs & Podcasts
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Klezmer Festivals & Learning Programs
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Jewish Music Resources at the Kirman Library
The books below are available at the Peretz Centre's Kirman Library, which is open to the public by appointment. (Peretz members have borrowing privileges.)
 Old Jewish Folk Music: The Collections and Writings of Moshe BeregovskiTranslated and edited by Mark Slobin (Syracuse University Press, 2000) |  Jewish Musical Traditionsby Amnon Shiloah (Wayne State University Press, 1995) |  Voices of a People: The Story of Yiddish Folk Songby Ruth Rubin (T. Yoseloff, 1963) |  A Treasury of Jewish Folk SongSelected and edited by Ruth Rubin (Schocken Books, 1964) |
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 The Yiddish song bookCompiled by Jerry Silverman (Stein and Day, 1983) |  Gezang un Kamf: Songs for Voice and PianoEdited and compiled by Jacob Schaefer (New York Jewish Workers Musical Alliance, 1936) |
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