My name is Nat Seelen and I play clarinet with Ezekiel’s Wheels Klezmer Band. You may remember us from the International Jewish Music Festival, where we won the Audience Choice Prize and the prize for Best Klezmer Band in 2012. Or perhaps you saw us at Rockport Music Shalin Liu Performance Center or at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Or maybe this is the first you’ve heard of us. Hello!

I’m writing because we are running a Kickstarter campaign to produce our new album, and we’re looking for your help to make it happen.

We’re recording the new album this summer. It’s going to be a beautiful thing, full of intricately-arranged songs from the Yiddish repertoire and original klezmer music, recorded in all the lush acoustical detail that New England Conservatory’s brand-new studio can capture. We’re working with klezmer legend Michael Winograd as our producer and with master recording engineer Jeremy Sarna to bring you the highest-quality album we’ve ever made.

You can visit ewklezmer.com/kickstarter to learn more and to back the album today.

What makes this album different from all other albums?

For one thing, we’re singing. In Yiddish and in English. And it sounds amazing.

For another thing, we’re working with an absolutely fantastic team: Michael Winograd is producing, Jeremy Sarna is recording and we’ve enlisted the aid of some of our favorite Yiddishists to work with us on the intricacies of the language.

We’re re-imagining favorite Yiddish song texts with our inventive arrangements and threading them together with original songs and tunes written just for this occasion. It’s going to be our best album yet, and we can’t wait to share it with you!

When are you making the album?

We have the studio booked July 31 to Aug. 3, 2018. We may need to pop back in for a few sessions, but we anticipate completing the bulk of the recording that week. After that point, we’ll move into mixing, mastering and production. We expect the new album to be ready for distribution by early 2019.

What does the new repertoire sound like?

Here’s a sneak peak! We recorded these two songs live at one of our recent shows at the Burren Backroom. Enjoy!

What’s a Kickstarter project?

Kickstarter is a platform that many artists and creators use to raise money for their projects. Instead of taking a loan out from a bank or an advance from a record label, we turn to our community to directly sponsor the creation of our new album. And in exchange for your generosity, you get to choose from an array of rewards, ranging from the excellent—pre-sale of the album itself—to the imaginative—enshrining of your commitment to great music on klezmerhero.com. We only receive the money from our campaign if we hit our funding goal, which means that if you fund this project, we will have enough to make it happen!

How will you use the Kickstarter money?

We’ll be spending this money on: studio time; recording engineering; mixing; mastering; producer; Yiddish language coaching; album art; photography; CD design; CD manufacturing; digital distribution; rewards fulfillment; and, of course, Kickstarter’s processing fees. If we surpass our funding goal, we will also be able to pay for a proper release campaign and music videos to get our music out to the masses.

What else can I do to support this project?

Thanks for asking! You can do three things to really move us along.

  1. Donate.
  2. Share our project page with any friends, family and colleagues you think might be interested.
  3. Post about it on Facebook, Twitter, /r/music, your local library’s bulletin board or wherever you post about things.

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