Born London, March 9, 1974. Died London, October 17, 2008, aged 34.
December 11, 2008 11:09By
Visionary klezmer musician, Jim Marcovitch pioneered the genre’s broad appeal in Britain, taking it out of the Jewish world and into nightclubs, festivals, parties and street markets.
The son of community paediatrician Harvey Marcovitch and his wife, Annie, Jim grew up in Oxford with his brother and sister. Musically gifted, he played the piano and studied music at Goldsmith’s College, London.
But it was through the accordion, on which he worked while studying klezmer at SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies, that he found a musical world rich in folklore, humour and theatre. He set up Shekoyokh, the klezmer band which took first prize at last year’s International Jewish Music Festival in Amsterdam.
The band reflected his expansive personality. With his trademark long hair and battered tails, he looked and lived a traditional klezmer musician’s life, playing for royalty one day, Glastonbury the next. Music was an adventure in which he continually devised and created unexpected combinations.
His move into theatre and puppetry was a natural progression. In collaboration with guitarist Ben Glasstone and cellist Hannah Marshall, he created the darkly theatrical and highly original score for the off-Broadway hit musical, The Mouse Queen, hailed as “inspired” by The New York Times.
Their latest album, Night of the Living Spoons, launched a week before his death, is a CD of topical satirical songs packed with harmonic surprises, improvised riffs and bravura, debunking hypocrisy and middle-class angst:
“All that guilt about the starving and concern about the planet/ Life was so much easier when the other classes ran it.”
He is survived by his parents, siblings and his wife, Jenny, whom he married a month before his death from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
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