Henry Sapoznik

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Musician

Henry "Hank" Sapoznik is an award winning author, radio and record producer and performer of traditional Yiddish and American music. A pioneering scholar and performer of klezmer music, he is credited with the late 20th century revival of klezmer. Henry Sapoznik co-produced the 10 part series the "Yiddish Radio Project" for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" in the spring of 2002, which won the Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism the same year he was nominated for an Emmy for his music score to the biographical documentary “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg.”

A pioneering scholar and performer of klezmer music, he founded "KlezKamp: The Yiddish Folk Arts Program" in 1985, and is the Executive Director of "Living Traditions" the folk arts organization which runs it. His book, Klezmer! Jewish Music from Old World to Our World won the 2000 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Excellence in Music Scholarship and has just been released in a new paperback edition. In addition to his work with Yiddish culture, he is Vice President of Piedmont Folk Legacies the organization which runs the annual Charlie Poole Music Festival and the forthcoming National Banjo Museum and Center in Eden, North Carolina.

He is a four time Grammy award nominee, his first in 1990 for “Partisans of Vilna” the first Yiddish recording to be nominated for a Grammy, two for his 2005 production of "You Ain't Talkin' To Me: Charlie Poole and the Roots of American Country Music" for Sony Columbia/Legacy and again in 2008 for his co-production of the 3 CD anthology "People Take Warning! Murder Ballads and Disaster Songs 1913-1938." His most recent CD anthology “Ernest Stoneman: The Unsung Father of Country Music” was nominated for a 2009 Grammy for Best Historical Notes.