Clarinetist David Krakauer uses the universal language of music — specifically Jewish music — to touch his audiences. For his latest project, he drew on a different but no less universal language: cinema.
Running popular movie themes through a rascally klezmer and jazz filter, “The Big Picture” is Krakauer’s homage to both the big screen and Jewish tradition.
Krakauer and his band recorded “The “Big Picture” as an album. They will perform the entire piece live on Aug. 21 at the SF Jazz Center, complete with accompanying animated films created for the tour.
“The Big Picture” features a diverse set of tunes, all relating in some way to Jews and Judaism. They include melodies from Woody Allen films (such as a Dixieland classic used in “Radio Days” and a Prokofiev march heard in “Love and Death”), John Williams’ theme from “Schindler’s List” and the Oscar-winning theme from “Chariots of Fire” (in which the main character was a persecuted Jew).
“This is a little different,” Krakauer said of his new project. “This takes me a bit out of my normal wheelhouse, which is kind of abnormal anyway, and looks more at mass culture. I tend to aim my projects on a personal trajectory of very personal creativity.”
Krakauer is best known for his adventurous solo work as well as his time in the original Klezmatics, a core band of the klezmer revival. Add in hours clocked with his band Ancestral Groove, teaching and moonlighting as a classical clarinetist, and Krakauer has one overbooked licorice stick.
“My career has been interesting because I lead my band and I play a lot of jazz festivals,” Krakauer said. “I’m not really seen as a traditional klezmer musician. My whole path has been multifaceted.”
A native of New York, Krakauer grew up the son of a violinist mother and a psychiatrist father. He attended synagogue and had a bar mitzvah but says after that, when it came to Judaism, he “hit the delete button.”
What proved permanent was a love of music, specifically the early New Orleans jazz of clarinetist Sidney Bechet, whose scratchy recordings Krakauer first heard as a kid. “Right away I heard this passion, I said this is it,” he recalls.
His talent took him all the way to Juilliard, from which he graduated an accomplished classical clarinetist. He made a living playing classical and some jazz, but by around his 30th birthday something shifted.
“I wanted to explore my cultural heritage,” he remembers. “I thought maybe I could get back. I said maybe klezmer would work for me, and eight months later I was doing it for fun. Then the Klezmatics heard about me.”
Over the years, he has teamed up with many greats from the realms of jazz, classical and klezmer, including the Kronos Quartet, John Zorn, Itzhak Perlman and Argentinian Jewish composer Osvaldo Golijov.
Though his embrace of klezmer remains as strong as ever, he has not shied away from stretching the borders of the genre, blending klezmer with jazz grooves, hip-hop influenced sampling and other musical cross-currents. “I’m a 21st-century musician,” he says, “coming from this Jewish place.”
That means Krakauer, 59, is constantly touring the world. One of his favorite annual ports of call is the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, Poland, which has become one of the most popular Jewish music events.
The first time he played the festival was in 1992 with the Klezmatics. It meant a lot to Krakauer, whose last name means he hailed from Krakow. As a child he figured he’d never personally get behind the Iron Curtain, and now here he was in the city of his ancestors.
“The festival director introduced me,” he recalls. “I said, ‘My name is David Krakauer and welcome to my city!’ To me I was reclaiming something that was lost to me. The subtext is I survived. My family survived.”
David Krakauer performs “The Big Picture” on Aug. 21 at SF Jazz Center, 201 Franklin St., S.F. www.sfjazz.org