Shalom- I'm Daniel Hoffman, the coordinator of Wedding Band Israel, a violinist, composer, and recent immigrant to Israel from the US. I know that negotiating the maze of putting together a simcha in Israel can be confusing and frustrating. This site is designed withEnglish-speakers in mind who want to hire a band for their simcha while visiting Israel.

With WBI, you connect to the bands and musicians directly and pay no booking or agent fees! Normally, the agents will tag on fees of up to 25% just for the privilege of working with them. This site is designed to allow you to decide for yourself which bands or musicians are right for you and then to negotiate directly with them.

All the groups represented here concertize locally and internationally and play simchas as well. Their standard of musicianship is very high. I perform with some of these bands, and others I just enjoy and want to recommend. I can also put together an ensemble specifically for your needs if you require something special.

Daniel Hoffman, a descendant of a long line of Bessarabian furriers, was born and raised near Los Angeles and moved to Israel in 2005. After graduating from the Manhattan School of Music in New York, he turned his attentions to Eastern European Jewish music and formed several klezmer bands in San Francisco. In 1992, he co-founded Davka, combining Ashkenazi music with jazz and Middle-Eastern rhythms and has released five CDs of original music, including four on the Tzadik label. He also founded the Klez-X (formerly the SF Klezmer Experience) and has developed a reputation as one of the foremost experts of the Yiddish violin style, recording and performing with the top players in the field. Hoffman has received numerous composition grants, including from Meet The Composer and the NEA. He has written two new scores for the silent films “The Golem” and “Jewish Luck”. He composed music for “David in Shadow and Light,” a new musical (with librettist Yehuda Hyman) based on the King David story, which premiered at Theatre J in Washington DC in May of 2008. In Israel he performs with Trio Carpion, J.C. Jones and Nory Jacoby in Between The Strings, a free music string trio,in the Greek/Israeli rembetiko group Perach Adom, and is currently performing in the new Jerusalem Theater Company comedy “Are You Happy Yet?” His latest releases are Davka Live and a remix of the Klez-X Harbst disc, KLZXRMX. He lives in Tel Aviv.

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