Klezmerata Fiorentina is a unique quartet of lead performers from the phenomenal Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, directed by the legendary Zubin Mehta. Since the group’s debut in 2005 at the Progetto Martha Argerich Festival in Lugano, Klezmerata Fiorentina has given highly acclaimed sold-out concerts on some the world’s most prestigious stages including the Quirinale Palace in Rome (The President’s official residence), the Great Hall of Congresses in the Kremlin, Moscow’s House of Music, the St Petersburg Philharmonic Society, Società di Quartetto in Milan, Amici della Musica in Florence, the Skirball Center in Los Angeles among many others. Festival appearances have included the Festival delle Nazioni, the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, Natalia Gutman’s Kreuth Festival in Germany, the Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto, the Chutzpah! Festival in Vancouver, the Telavi Festival in Georgia and the Summertime Festival in Jurmala.

The Italian state broadcasting company RAI, as well as Canadian, Slovenian and other television networks, have devoted several special programmes to the group. Klezmerata Fiorentina’s work has attracted the attention and support of some of the world’s foremost classical music personalities. Zubin Mehta described the ensemble’s art as the ‘…perfect expression of both joy and sorrow. It is not just great entertainment, it is great music-making!’

Klezmerata Fiorentina enriches its concerts with free communication between the performers and the audience; it accompanies the musical element with short stories, explanations, and remarks. The musicians make the audience laugh and cry at the same time, because their music smiles through tears. Their performance is not just a collection of individual pieces, but a top-class combined arts show!

Old traditional melodies, collected in the early 20th century through the groundbreaking fieldwork of a handful of pioneering ethnomusicologists, are heard in their full emotional complexity and interpreted by Klezmerata as the living voice of a now vanished, European Yiddish civilization.