Dave Tarras
c. 1895–1989
Brandwein's great rival and opposite — a poised, lyrical clarinetist from Podolia who defined American klezmer (כּלי־זמר) for half a century and lived to mentor the 1970s revival.
was born David Tarasiuk around 1895–97 near Ternivka in Podolia (now Ukraine), third-generation klezmer — his father was a trombonist and badkhn (באַדחן) . Conscripted into the tsar's army in 1915, his musicianship kept him in the regimental band and out of the trenches; after the revolution and pogroms he emigrated, reaching New York in 1921, where he briefly worked in a garment shop before his clarinet made him the most recorded klezmer musician in America. Where Brandwein was wild, Tarras was precise: warm-toned, elegantly phrased, at home in Yiddish theater (ייִדיש טעאַטער) pits and on Greek, Polish, and Russian sessions alike. At the start of the klezmer revival he mentored young musicians including Andy Statman, and in 1984 the National Endowment for the Arts awarded him a National Heritage Fellowship — the United States' highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. He died in 1989.