It sounds good. In keeping the sometimes darker theme of the recording, we have Chava Alberstein's setting of Zishe Landau's "Ver firt di ale shifn" who guides the ships? The song sinks in, in waves, as the listener reflects on lost children in too many places around the globe. Elsewhere on the album, we encounter not just old and new poems set to new music, but older songs, including some gathered in the last century by folklorists Ruth Rubin and Moishe Beregovski. Fittingly, the album closes with a quiet version of an American Yiddish theatre tune, "Mazltov," with which we wish not only ourselves, but the Klezmatics good mazl.
Although much of the new music on the recording is written by Frank London, there are notable new instrumentals by Lisa Gutkin and Matt Darriau, as well as the music to "Der Mames Shpigl" My mother's mirror , also by Gutkin. The recording's name, "Apikorsim" heretics seems to have many meanings. It is the name of the title track, a celebration of breaking the traditional Jewish tao halakha in a land far away that may exist only in a dream, or already, here.
Sklamberg's words convey a dreamy pleasure. The title is also reflected in the epigram that opens the liner notes, "The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next," from Helen Keller. The words to the song were written by a young Harvard instructor, Yuri Vedenyanpin who also provided a Yiddish translation of a Catalan tolk tune for this recording and are joined on this recording by a slightly older Yiddish writer, contemporary to the Klezmatics' generation, Michael Wex, whose "Shushan Purim" adds to the gaity of the recording.
The generational meaning of Helen Keller's quote could easily be applied to the Klezmatics successfully breaking and remaking the idea of what Jewish music was a generation ago, now the model for better klezmer bands everyone and no longer sounding so heretical. Be that as it may, this is excellent new music, and it is a joy that the Klezmatics have persevered and continue to write, and to showcase Jewish music, new and old. The Nobleman's Wedding Mood Indigo The Constant Lovers The Abbey Reels Gregorian Chant Through the Bitter Frost and Snow Revolution Earth But the New York-based band Whirligig does it in a way that is both more adventurous and less self-promoting than most.
When they add subtle drum programming, a clarinet obbligato, and a horn section to Lisa Moscatiello's exquisite singing on "A Fair Maid Walking," it doesn't sound like they're trying to be cute; it sounds like they've hit upon a perfect arrangement and simply weren't bothered by the fact that the clarinet has no traditional role in Irish music.
And "Mood Vertigo," a tune written by guitarist Paul Kovit shortly after he purchased a home in County Donegal, draws at least as heavily on Klezmer modes and rhythms as it does on Irish ones, to delightful effect. That's just two tracks out of ten, each of which is almost equally refreshing and attractive. Rhythme Bulgare 2 4. Andaluz 5. Flying at a Slant 6.
Faux Clarinet 7. Balkan Suite 8. Phase Mahavishnu 9. Darriau and his Paradox "Trio" a quartet in sum deeply investigate melodies from the Balkan countries and fuse them with jazz sensibilities, a maddeningly attractive combination of unison playing and improvisations, utilizing traditional and Eastern folk instruments.
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