September 2004

Lori Lippitz: Leader of the Band 

Listen to a sample (mp3) (requires audio plugin)

Lori Lippitz '79 double-majored in English and Russian languages and literature but ended up in music. She founded the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band in Skokie, Illinois, in 1983, at a time when she was exploring her family's roots in Eastern European Jewry.

Lippitz, who says her favorite teachers in Ann Arbor were Thomas Garbaty and Ralph Williams, heard klezmer music for the first time on Chicago WFMT radio's “Midnight Special” program.

“I nearly jumped out of my skin,” she told the Chicago Jewish News earlier this year. “I thought, is this Jewish music? I was very excited.

With its blend of East European folk, early jazz and theater music, along with mystical tunes from the Jewish Chasidic tradition, klezmer music is richly varied, making it popular for weddings, religious ceremonies, concerts, Carnegie Hall and foreign tours.

An accomplished soprano who had performed as a cantorial soloist for several years, Lippitz recruited outstanding musicians and other vocalists to join the band, which they named in honor of the neighborhood inhabited by Chicago's earliest Jewish immigrants just a bit southwest of the Loop.

Lippitz, who is married to Marc Chinitz and has a daughter Kayla, 5, also works with Chicago Peace Now and with Genesis at the Crossroads, a group that brings Jews and Arabs together through music and art.

The Chicago Jewish News named her one of 2004's Ten Top Jewish Chicagoans of the Year.

Lyrics:

In the piece excerpted here, the woman sings: ‘Oy, Abram [Abraham], I can't live without you! Me without you, you without me, would be like a doorknob without a door. Remember that red dress? Oy, was I a lovely girl….

Man: Oy, vey, my Rikvele [Rebecca], give me your lips!

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