Jay Ungar
1946 - present Jay Ungar is a folk musician best known for his composition Ashokan Farewell, originally composed as a waltz.
Life and Music
- Jay Ungar was born to Eastern European immigrants in the Bronx.
- Jay Ungar originally composed Ashokan Farewell in 1982 as a waltz, shortly after the close of the summer Fiddle and Dance Camps at Ashokan in the Catskill Mountains, not far from Woodstock, New York.
- Ashokan Farewell was used as the theme tune to an American TV documentary by Ken Burns called 'The Civil War'.
- Ungar recorded the piece for the show with his wife Molly Mason. They have performed together since the late 1970s. Ungar plays the fiddle and Mason is a guitarist.
- Ungar and his wife perform folk music, Civil War classics, swing and country music and their own original compositions.
