Career
With MacArthur Fellow David Isay, he produced the 10-week radio series the "Yiddish Radio Project" on the history of Jewish broadcasting for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered in the spring of 2002. A pioneering scholar and performer of klezmer music, Sapoznik founded the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archives of Recorded Sound at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and was its first director from 1982 to 1994. As an outgrowth of that work, in 1985 Sapoznik started "KlezKamp: The Yiddish Folk Arts Program", the world"s most important training venue for practitioners of this nearly lost art and, in 1994, founded Living Traditions to administer lieutenant
His "Klezmer! A four-time Grammy nominated performer/producer, Sapoznik has recorded and/or produced over 35 recordings of traditional Yiddish and American music
His 2005 3-Civil Defense anthology of country music pioneer Charlie Poole for Sony Columbia Legacy was nominated for three Grammy awards (Best Historical Album, Best Album Notes, Best Box Design). In 2007, he co-produced the 3-Civil Defense reissue anthology "People Take Warning! His most recent project with co-producer King is the 2 Civil Defense reissue box set "Ernest V. Stoneman: The Unsung Father of Country Music 1925–1934" for 5 String Productions (2008).
He co-produced, with Sherry Mayrent and Christopher King, the 3-Civil Defense compilation "Cantors, Klezmorim and Crooners 1905–1953: Classic Yiddish 78s from the Mayrent Collection". In his Wall Street Journal review, National Hentoff calls Sapoznik a "fount of historical and anecdotal knowledge of Yiddish culture and history".
He plays banjo and autoharp on Kevin Burke"s 1977 album Sweeney"s Dream.
Friction between him and bandmembers led to his departure. Sapoznik is director of the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and is also the curator of the Henry Sapoznik Collection (AFC 2010/003), an archive documenting Yiddish-American Radio, at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
