Paul Weider interviews Andy Statman

You could attend a lecture on the history of music, on its African and Middle Eastern origins… on its journeys around the Mediterranean coasts, through Europe, and across the Atlantic… on its trek across North America with stops in New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis, and Chicago. Or you could just listen to the music of Andy Statman, which would convey the same information but be much more pleasurable an experience. And one you can soon enjoy live, by the way— Statman is coming to the Old Town School of Folk Music on March 30, 2008. Statman is often wrongly pigeonholed as a klezmer clarinetist and a bluegrass mandolinist. While he has been both— which is impressive enough— he is no longer either, but much more than any label could encompass. Not surprisingly, Andy Statman grew up in an incredibly musically diverse environment, he explained in this interview. His family included Old World cantors going back to the 1700s, New World vaudevillians, classical musicians … and even Tin Pan Alley songwriters like Sammy “Love is a Many Splendored Thing” Fain.