Lerner Moguilevsky Duo brings klezmer with an Argentine flavor to the Jewish Community Center
By Bruce Bellingham


Klezmer music is some of the wildest in the world. It’s hard to describe; sometimes it sounds like Hebraic Dixieland. It must be the ever-present wail of the clarinet. No klezmer group is quite like another. Klezmer musicians absorb their environment, rejoicing in the assimilation, raising the roof with an unblushing, sassy style. It’s not music for the shy and retiring.

César Lerner and Marcelo Moguilevsky, descendents of Eastern European immigrants to Argentina, have been playing together for 27 years. They made their Bay Area debut two years ago, and they return to the Jewish Community Center on Saturday, Nov. 14. Lerner and Moguilevsky have devised their own musical vernacular, employing Argentine folk music, jazz, and, of course, tango.
Moguilevsky is a vocalist who also plays an astonishing array of instruments – clarinet, bass, soprano sax, wooden flutes, harmonica, bagpipe, and duduk, an ancient double-reed instrument. He is considered one of the best clarinetists in the klezmer world. Lerner soars at the piano, accordion and percussion. 

It is said the songs describe the journey of the first Jewish settlers in Argentina to the life at the temple of Templo de Libertad in Buenos Aires.

Lerner Moguilevsky Duo: Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California Street (at Presidio); Saturday, Nov. 14, 8 p.m.; tickets $35–$32 at 415-292-1233 or www.jccsf.org/arts