Songs of my Grandfathers, Recklinghausen

Imagine having two grandfathers who were songwriters and were as successful in their day as Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim are today!  

Amazingly, Michael Alexander Willens is fortunate to be the grandson of both Alexander Olshanetsky and Herman Yablokoff, two of the most successful songwriters who wrote the music for many Yiddish theater musicals that flourished in New York in the first part of the 20th century.  

Two of their most famous songs, Papirossen and Mein Shtetele Belz, have been translated into 26 languages and are still performed around the world. Songs like Hopkele, Shvayg mayn Harz, Hosti Gisti Bisti and Ikh hob dich zuviel Lib as well many others are considered to be classics in the Yiddish Song Book repertoire. 

They are regularly performed internationally by singers and klezmer bands and have also been used in many films and television programs.

However, they are rarely performed in the version for which they were conceived, namely with a Broadway-style show band which Alexander Olshanetsky directed at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills for several summers.  

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