Naftule Brandwein

Naftule Brandwein, or Naftuli Brandwine, was an Austrian-born Jewish American Klezmer musician, clarinetist, bandleader and recording artist active from the 1910s to the 1940s. Along with Dave Tarras, he is considered to be among the top klezmer musicians of the twentieth century, and has a continuing influence on musicians in the genre a century later. Along with Tarras and other contemporaries like Israel J. Hochman, Max Leibowitz and Harry Kandel, he also helped forge the new American klezmer sound of the early twentieth century, which gradually gravitated towards a sophisticated big-band sound.