JORDAN KLAPMAN, Accompanist
Jordan Klapman is a pianist, composer, music director, and music educator. Since 1977 he has specialized in 20th century popular music—from traditional jazz, Dixieland and 1920s-30s dance music—to The Great American Songbook, Broadway, 1960s pop, and klezmer. He can be heard in festivals, clubs, concert halls, and theatres across Ontario, and beyond.
Jordan teaches courses on 20th century popular music for Hot Docs Curious Minds, the University of Toronto's School for Continuing Studies, Ryerson's LIFE Institute, George Brown, The Baycrest Learning Academy, and many other educational and cultural institutions. His uniquely "edu-taining" courses and lectures cover topics such as The History of Tin Pan Alley, Broadways Greatest Composers, The History of Jazz, Great Songs of the Sixties, Hollywood's Oscar-Winning Songs, The Great American Songbook, The Harlem Renaissance, The Big Band Swing Era, The History of Silent Film Accompaniment, and many other musical topics.
Since 2012, Jordan has composed and accompanied screenings of classic silent films for the Toronto International Film Festival, the Toronto Silent Film Society, Silent Sundays at The Revue, the University of Toronto's Media Commons and Innis College Film Studies department, The Toronto Jewish Film Society — and The Vintage Film Festival.
Jordan has been playing original accompaniments for the Vintage Film Festival's silent film screenings since 2013, beginning with Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. He was invited back the following year to accompany Chaplin's The Gold Rush—and has been a VFF favourite ever since.
Jordan is delighted to be back in 2022 to accompany two classic films, featuring three stars of the silent screen in breakout roles: Little Old New York featuring Marion Davies, and He Who Gets Slapped with Lon Chaney and Montreal-born Norma Shearer.