Joel Rubin is Associate Professor and Director of Music Performance in the McIntire Department of Music. He holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from City, University of London (2001). He is co-author of the books Klezmer-Musik (Bärenreiter/dtv, 1999) and Jüdische Musiktraditionen (Jewish Musical Traditions; Gustav Bosse-Verlag, 2001) and the author of Mazltov! Jewish-American Wedding Music for Clarinet (Schott Musik International, 1998). His most recent work on klezmer music in Germany has appeared in the award-winning anthology, Dislocated Memories: Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture (OUP, 2014), and in Ethnomusicology Forum 24(2)(2015). Rubin wrote the notes to the CD anthology, Chekhov’s Band: Eastern European Klezmer Music from the EMI Archives 1908-1913 (Renair Records, 2015). He is also an internationally acclaimed performer of klezmer music and has recorded numerous CDs, most recently, Poyln: A Gilgul (2015), a collaboration with the trio Veretski Pass.

His interests include Jewish musical traditions (klezmer, hasidic, American Jewish popular music, Middle East and beyond); improvisation and modality; music and trauma; music and professionalism; music and immigration; music and diaspora; music and identity; music and religion; folk music revivals; musical hybridity; art and urban popular traditions of the Balkans, Turkey, and the Middle East.

Rubin’s book, Klezmer in New York in the Early Twentieth Century: The Music of Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras, is due out with the University of Rochester Press in fall 2020.