Christian Dawid

Christian Dawid (born 1966) is a German clarinetist, Klezmer musician, educator, and composer. He is generally regarded as one of the top Klezmer musicians in Germany, and has performed with groups such as Trio Yas and Khupe, as well as with international Klezmer groups such as Brave Old World, Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird, Ben Caplan, Budowitz and The Other Europeans.

Some of his major projects are related to Ukrainian Jewish music, including a project to record the songs of the Yiddish singer Arkady Gendler, and bringing the Podolian brass band of the Baranovsky family to international audiences as Konsonans Retro.

Biography Dawid was born in Bremen, West Germany in 1966. His father was a Protestant Pastor from Bremen and his mother is an educator turned sculptor born in East Prussia. By the early 2000s, he began to teach at Klezmer festivals in Europe and North America, including Yiddish Summer Weimar and KlezKanada. He has since become one of the top klezmer musicians in Germany, and one of the most prominent non-Jewish klezmer musicians globally. He first toured with Brave Old World in 1999, and became a member Budowitz in 2000. They released two albums together, in 2007 and 2010.

In 2009 he traveled on an EU-funded trip to Moldova with Alan Bern, klezmer researcher Walter Zev Feldman and a large group of musicians and researchers to investigate the links between Jewish and Moldovan Roma music. The resulting collaboration with Roma musicians from Moldova and elsewhere was called The Other Europeans; Dawid played clarinet in the "Jewish" half of the group.

In 2010 he became the Instrumental Music Coordinator at KlezKanada, a role which he still holds and which has been redefined as the Music Program Coordinator.

In the early 2010s, he led a project to record the Ukrainian Yiddish singer and songwriter Arkady Gendler (1921–2017). Following the release of the album, Dawid and Yiddish music and dance researcher Avia Moore traveled to visit Gendler in Ukraine in 2012.

Selected works Books (Golden Horn Records, 2012) Klezmer duets: clarinet & accordion (with Alan Bern, Universal Edition, 2016)

Albums (With Khupe; Yellowjacket music, 1999) (with Khupe; Klezmerdialogues, 2003) A Podolian affair (with Konsonans Retro, Oriente Music, 2007) Budowitz Live (with Budowitz, Golden Horn Records, 2007) For the Moment (with Paul Brody's Sadawi, Tzadik Records, 2007) Zagnitkiv (with Konsonans Retro, Rybalka Records, 2010) Trio Yas Live (with Trio Yas, 2012) (with Arkady Gendler singing; Golden Horn Records, 2013) Get up! The Dance Album (with Trio Yas, 2018) Christian Plays Jewish (2021) (2022)