NEW YORK —  New York City-based Yiddish singer, multi-instrumentalist, dancer and researcher Michael Alpert will be honored later this week in Washington D.C. as a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) National Heritage Fellowship. Alpert has dedicated his life to preserving, performing and teaching Yiddish music and culture throughout North America and the world. He represents the diverse traditional arts, culture and heritage activities thriving in New York State.  

Alpert joins just eleven other traditional artists in receiving this year’s Fellowship. Annually, a panel of folk and traditional arts experts review public nominations and determine Fellowship recipients based of their continuing artistic accomplishments and contributions as practitioners and teachers. Recipients receive an award of $25,000. All recipients will be honored at an awards ceremony and a concert in Washington, DC on October 1-2, 2015. The NEA National Heritage Fellowships Concert, to be held Friday, October 2 at 8pm E.T., will be live streamed at arts.gov, and will include a performance by Alpert.

A key figure in the renaissance of East European Jewish music and culture worldwide, Alpert learned Yiddish, Russian, and Polish songs at an early age, attending Orthodox synagogues and shule, secular Yiddish school. Moving to New York City in 1979, he was co-founder of the pioneering klezmer band Kapelye, researching the repertoire of traditional East European-born Yiddish performers and playing alongside them. Alpert is best known for his performances and recordings as a solo artist with the ensembles Brave Old World and Kapelye, and collaborations with artists across a broad spectrum of cultures and generations. In 2012-13, with support from NYSCA’s Folk Arts program, Alpert taught an apprentice more than 40 songs from his repertoire of love songs, lullabies, ballads, work songs and historically situated songs. Please click here for Alpert’s full biography as well as audio and video selections of his work.

Alpert was nominated for the award by the Center for Traditional Music and Dance (CTMD) where he serves as a Senior Research Fellow. CTMD, one of the nation’s preeminent traditional arts organizations, is noted for its pioneering work in safeguarding traditions through presentations, documentation and recordings. It receives funding for its ongoing activities through NYSCA’s Folk Arts program, which supports more than 70 non-profit organizations statewide. NYSCA’s Folk Arts program is devoted to sustaining New York’s living cultural heritage within their communities of origin as well as enabling New Yorkers to experience presentations of ethnic, regional, occupational and religious traditions. 

Since the National Heritage Fellowship’s inception in 1982, 36 traditional New York State artists have received the honor. These fellows embody the State’s diverse heritage and have included an African-American tap dancer, a Greek clarinetist, an Arab American oud player, a Haitian drummer, a Peking opera performer and recently a Mohawk basketmaker, Henry Arquette named a fellow in 2014.  

For more information on the NEA's National Heritage Fellowships, including bios, interviews, and audio selections for the Heritage Fellows; portraits by New York-based photographer Tom Pich of more than 170 Fellows in their homes, studios, and at sites that most vividly reflect the essence of their artwork; and publications such as a 30th anniversary publication, and a Masters of Traditional Arts Education Guide, visit arts.gov.

About the New York State Council on the Arts

New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), created by Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the NYS Legislature in 1960, is an agency of the Executive Branch of the New York State Government dedicated to preserving and expanding the rich and diverse cultural resources that are and will become the heritage of New York's citizens. For more information on NYSCA, please visit: www.arts.ny.gov