Awards

Awards & Accolades

  • GRAMMY® Award — Best Contemporary World Music Album — for Wonder Wheel (2006)

  • Hungarian Order of Merit Knight’s Cross (Hungarian Consulate Award) — presented to Frank London for his service as a cultural ambassador for Hungarian and Hungarian-Jewish music (2016)

  • YIVO Lifetime Achievement Award (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research) (2013)

  • Premio Tenco Prize for Achievement in Songwriting (Italian Club Tenco) (2012)

  • Preis der Deutsches Schallplattenkritik (German Critics’ Award)

  • GLAMA (Gay and Lesbian American Music Award) — for The Well with Israeli folk singer Chava Alberstein (1998)

  • Top 10 Billboard Magazine World Music chart

  • Top 10 European World Music chart

  • Top 10 College Music Journal chart

Musical Collaborations

  • Filmmaker and multimedia artist Péter Forgács on “Letters to Afar“

  • Pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill on “Havana Nagila“

  • Classical icon Itzhak Perlman

  • American folk singer Arlo Guthrie

  • Israeli singer Chava Alberstein

  • Israeli singer Ehud Banai

  • Kosher Gospel African-American Jewish singer Joshua Nelson

  • Jazz singer/organist Kathryn Farmer

  • Avant-garde jazz keyboardist/vocalist Amina Claudine Myers

  • Singer-guitarist Raul MidÃ

  • The Master Musicians of Jajouka

  • NYC avant-rockers Elliot Sharp, Marc Ribot and John Zorn

  • Philadelphia jazz statesmen Bootsy Barnes and Sam Dockery

  • Folk icon Theodore Bikel (co-founder of the Newport Folk Festival)

  • Members of the Flying Karamazov Brothers

  • Ben Folds Five‘s Whatever & Ever Amen, Steven’s Last Night in Town (SONY/550)

  • Nubian Egyptian percussionist Mahmoud Fadl

  • Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg

  • Poet Jerome Rothenberg

  • John Medeski (of Medeski, Martin & Wood)

  • Canadian political folk band Moxy Früvous

  • Pop music icon Neil Sedaka

  • New York City cult girl group BETTY

Theatre Collaborations

  • Score for Pulitzer Prize winning author Tony Kushner‘s (Angels in America) adaptation of the classic Yiddish drama “A Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds” (New York Public Theater, Hartford Stage)

  • Composed/performed music for Kushner’s work-in-progress “It’s An Undoing World, or Why Should It Be Easy When It Can Be Hard” at its premiere at Los Angeles’ John Anson Ford Theater

  • Acclaimed performance piece “The Third Seder” (a multi-media Passover extravaganza featuring the Klezmatics and other cutting edge New York Jewish artists) staged at New York’s Jewish Museum and La Mama Theater

Film Collaborations

  • Jonathan Berman, “The Shvitz”

  • Gregg Bordowitz, “Fast Trip, Long Drop”

  • Judith Helfand, A Healthy Baby Girl, broadcast on PBS television series “P.O.V.”

Dance Collaborations

  • Score for the Pilobolus Dance Theatre’s Davenen (premiered at Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center and continues tbe shown internationally)

  • Provided music for new work by choreographer Twyla Tharp in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Martha Graham’s birth

Notable Performances

  • Cross-cultural project and Central Park Summerstage performances with the Master Musicians of Jajouka (a 4000-year old Moroccan ensemble known as the world’s oldest rock and roll band)

  • Sold-out performances in Paris, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Helsinki, Prague, New York, Washington DC and Los Angeles with Chava Alberstein

  • First annual Heimatklänge Festival (1988)

  • Sold out Carnegie Hall performance with Arlo Guthrie

  • Sold out Carnegie Hall performance with Neil Sedaka

  • Concert at Berlin’s historic New Synagogue with Israeli singer Chava Alberstein and Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary), Summer 2001

  • Tanglewood and Ravinia with Itzhak Perlman

TV Shows

  • PBS Emmy-Award winning special “Great Performances: In the Fiddler’s House” with Itzhak Perlman

  • CBS’s “Late Night with David Letterman”

  • CBS’s “Nightwatch”

  • Fox’s “After Breakfast”

  • BBC’s “Rhythms of the World”

  • MTV News

  • Original Klezmatics score for a cartoon narrated by comedian Jackie Mason on talk show host Rosie O’Donnell’s TV special “Kids Are Punny”

  • Nickelodeon television jingle: Klezmatics version of the jingle animated and broadcast in regular rotation

  • PBS’s internationally aired Voices: A Musical Celebration, with Israeli singer Chava Alberstein and Peter Yarrow

  • HBO’s “Sex and the City” — on-screen appearance as Charlotte’s wedding band

Radio

  • BBC’s John Peel Show

  • Regularly featured on National Public Radio’s (NPR) New Sounds and New Sounds Live, both with host John Schaefer

  • Regular guests on NPR’s Soundcheck

  • Regular guest spots on NPR’s A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

  • WV Public Radio’s Mountain Stage, broadcast nationally

Miscellaneous

  • Two Yiddish dance standards recorded with klezmer clarinet legend Ray Musiker for Ellipsis Arts disc Klezmer Music: A Marriage of Heaven and Earth

  • Two remixes on the Shanachie cd collection Klezmania: Klezmer for the New Millennium

  • Mash-up of ska rhythms for a cover of “Dthe Ska (KlezSkaLypso)” on the Skatalites tribute CD Freedom Sounds (Shanachie)

  • Collaboration with actor/clown Bill Irwin on I Do! Me Too, a CD benefiting the restoration of the oldest US church organ at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine

  • Featured on two of the Knitting Factory’s Jewzapalooza/Klezmer Festival CDs, including a collaboration with Anthony Coleman and poet Aloll Trehorn on “Ode to Karl Marx”

  • Previously unreleased track included on the Six Degrees CD compilation Festival of Light

  • In the Fiddler’s House (the Itzhak Perlman CD on which he plays original Klezmatics arrangements and compositions and shares writing credit with the band) has topped world and classical music charts internationally and became one of the top selling folk recordings of the past decade. Live in the Fiddler’s House, a second album, was recorded at Radio City Music Hall.