Elaine Hoffman Watts

Elaine Hoffman Watts (May 25, 1932 – September 25, 2017) was a klezmer drummer from Philadelphia, United States. She came from a line of klezmer musicians from what is now Ukraine and was the daughter of Jacob Hoffman, a klezmer xylophone player and bandleader from the 1920s who also played with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Ballets Russes Orchestra. Her daughter Susan Watts is a klezmer trumpet player and an important figure in the klezmer revival. In 1954 she was the first woman percussionist to be accepted and graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Beginning in 1998, she was a percussion teacher at KlezKamp, and she has taught percussion in the Philadelphia area since the mid-1960s. She was a recipient of a 2007 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States' highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.