Klezmer Band Returns To Highland Park For 1st Time Since Mass Shooting

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — The Maxwell Street Klezmer Band performed in Highland Park last weekend for the first time since it was interrupted by a mass shooting at the city's July 4 parade.

Lori Lippitz, founder and director of the band, estimated the band has played more than a thousand events in Highland Park in its nearly four-decade history.

This year's parade would have been its 11th in the city, Lippitz said, telling Highland Park Patch it was a great feeling to be able to return.

"To be able to begin to replace the traumatic associations of this year's parade with happy moments and memories is essential to the resilience of the community and to us personally," Lippitz said.

"But at the same time, there is no way to recover from the tragedy of the day," she added. "I personally worked with a wonderful woman only weeks before she became one of the victims at the parade. One can never fully heal from those losses."

More than 100 people attended Sunday afternoon's performance at the Highland Park Public Library, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

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A widely shared video of this year's parade recorded by Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet captures the first sign that sometime was terribly wrong on Independence Day.

The band had just begun to play from the back of a flatbed truck when paradegoers began fleeing in the opposite direction down Central Avenue.

A 22-year-old Highwood man with a history of posting antisemitic messages and calls for genocide against Black and Asian people on online forums has pleaded not guilty to 117 felony counts in connection with the shooting.

Authorities said the lone gunman fired more than 80 shots into the crowd, killing seven and wounding nearly 50 others, before briefly fleeing to Wisconsin, where he considered a shooting spree but decided against it. Police and prosecutors have not disclosed any motive for the shooter, who is due back in court next month for a status hearing.

Violinist and band leader Alex Koffman helped the truck driver safely maneuver away without hitting anyone in the fleeing crowd, telling the Forward he relied on military training from his native Belarus. He was not able to sleep for several nights after the shooting, he said.

After Sunday's concert, Tuba player Howard Prager told the Sun-Times the focus of the show was spreading peace and joy, and Highland Park needs "all the peace and joy it can have after what happened this summer."

Joining Lippitz, Koffman and Prager at Sunday's show were: Natasha Bodansky on vocals, Ivo Braun on trumpet, Jim Cox on bass, Gail Mangurten on keyboard and Bartek Warkoczynski on clarinet.

Lippitz, the band manager and vocalist, told Patch the band intends to perform the next time Highland Park holds a 4th of July parade.

"If everyone doesn't pull together and take back the holiday, there will literally be no more Independence Day," Lippitz said in an email. "The freedom to gather, play in parades, celebrate with family and friends, and be a community requires all of us to take back the day.

"But I really don't blame anyone who feels hesitant to come to parades or bring their kids or grandkids," she continued. "On the other hand, you can be sure that Highland Park and cities across America are going to be much more focused on security issues in 2023."

Watch: Livestream of the Oct. 23 concert via the Highland Park Public Library »