Biographical Note
Michael Alpert is a scholar, linguist, and performer whose work focuses on the expressive culture of Eastern European Jews in the late nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries in Europe and the United States. His former research affiliations include New York City's YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, Oxford University, Columbia University, Yale University, and Indiana University. He was the 2015 recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition to his scholarly work on klezmer and Yiddish folk music, he is a performer with the ensembles Brave Old World and Kapelye where he performs primarily on violin, percussion, and accordion.