Accolades
Awards
GRAMMY® Award — Best Contemporary World Music Album — for Wonder Wheel with guests Susan McKeown and Boo Reiners (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
“2000 Years” by Mike Leigh
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.”
“Then She Found Me” starring Helen Hunt
“My Mexican Shivah” directed by Alejandro Springall
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
Dance Theater of Harlem - rework of Ballymouk featuring new arrangements of existing melodies
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”
Conan O’Brien Show - celebrating Happy Joyous Hanukah
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.