Jay Ungar (born November 14, 1946) is an American

folk musician Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has be ...

and composer.

Life and career

Ungar was born in the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. He frequented

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

music venues during his formative period in the 1960s. In the late 1960s, he became a member of Cat Mother and the All Night News Boys and later, the Putnam String County Band. Although he performs with

David Bromberg David Bromberg (born September 19, 1945) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter. David Bromberg biographyat Billboard.com An eclectic artist, Bromberg plays bluegrass, blues, folk, jazz, country and western, and rock a ...

, he is probably best known for "

Ashokan Farewell "Ashokan Farewell" is a piece of music composed by the American folk musician Jay Ungar in 1982. For many years it served as a goodnight or farewell waltz at the annual Ashokan Fiddle & Dance Camps run by Ungar and his wife Molly Mason, who ga ...

" (1982), composed as a

lament A lament or lamentation is a passionate expression of grief, often in music, poetry, or song form. The grief is most often born of regret, or mourning. Laments can also be expressed in a verbal manner in which participants lament about somet ...

,In the composer's words
"''Ashokan Farewell'' was written in the style of a Scottish lament."
and used as the theme tune to the

Ken Burns Kenneth Lauren Burns (born July 29, 1953) is an American filmmaker known for his documentary films and television series, many of which chronicle American history and culture. His work is often produced in association with WETA-TV and/or th ...

documentary '' The Civil War'' (1990). Many of his other compositions are familiar as contradance tunes, notably "The Wizard's Walk." In 1991, Ungar married fellow musician

Molly Mason Molly Mason is an American musician and composer and performs as a duo Jay & Molly with her husband Jay Ungar. Jay's composition, Ashokan Farewell, became the title theme of Ken Burns' The Civil War on PBS. The soundtrack won a Grammy and Ashoka ...

. They met during the 1970s. They continue to perform as a duo, with their band, ''Swingology'', and as the ''Jay Ungar and Molly Mason Family Band'' with Jay's daughter

Ruth Ungar Ruth Ungar Merenda was born February 19, 1976, in Mount Kisco, New York. She is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who plays fiddle, ukulele and guitar. She is the daughter of fiddler/composer Jay Ungar and singer Lyn Hardy and a ...

(her mother is Lyn Hardy) and her husband Michael Merenda. In 1992, Ungar and Mason provided the soundtrack to the acclaimed documentary film '' Brother's Keeper'', released as a music CD entitled ''Waltzing with You'' (1998). In 2006, the duo headlined the

Northwest Folklife Festival Northwest Folklife is an independent 501(c)(3) arts organization that celebrates the multigenerational arts, cultures, and traditions of a global Pacific Northwest. The Northwest Folklife Festival is an annual festival of ethnic, folk, and tradit ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...

References

External links

Jay Ungar & Molly Mason

Folk Alley Sessions: Ashokan Farewell
Kent State University, Ohio, 2011. American folk musicians American fiddlers American male composers 21st-century American composers 20th-century American Jews Living people 1946 births Angel Records artists People from the Bronx Musicians from New York City 21st-century American violinists 21st-century American male musicians 21st-century American Jews {{US-music-bio-stub