CelticMKE Milwaukee Irish Fest Irish Fest Scrapbook School of Music Summer School Ward Irish Music Archives
Jeff Ksiazek, a member of Milwaukee band áthas, has been playing wind instruments for two decades. After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Music Performance in 1998, he has regularly performed, recorded several albums in a variety of genres, and taught music performance and theory.
Jeff received his MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Information Studies in 2008, concentrating in archives. As the archivist of the Ward Irish Music Archives (WIMA) at Milwaukee Irish Fest, Jeff Ksiazek has worked on a number of projects including the Dunn Family Collection. This digital collection showcases material from Milwaukee fiddler Michael J. Dunn, including 32 wax cylinder recordings produced by Captain Francis O’Neill in Chicago between 1902 and 1912. He’s currently working on digital collections of WIMA’s sheet music collections and commercial Irish music cylinders.
Recently his historical research interests have focused on the musicians of Paddy Killoran’s bands of 1930s New York, including Michael “Whitey” Andrews, Paul Ryan, Jim McGinn, and Jack Healy. Jeff presented material about Killoran’s bands at The Session Conference in Milwaukee (2012) and the 47th Annual Association for Recorded Sound Collections Conference in Kansas City (2013).
Jeff offers instruction on bouzouki, Irish flute, whistle, and silver flute in Irish music.