Naftulte's Dream still driving
Glenn Dickson has periodically rented the tiny LilyPad lounge in Cambridge to showcase his bands. In a hall that small, you're really talking about a chance for the band to play what most interests it at the moment, and for a tiny audience (40 people?) to listen in. It's like a slightly extended house concert, and about that formal. On the other hand, on a cold, rainy day like this afternoon, it is the perfect setting to hear hot music.
This afternoon it was the turn of Naftule's Dream, the avant garde offshoot of one of my favorite local bands, Shirim Klezmer Orchestra. With the exception of relative newcomer Andrew Stern, on guitar, this is the same ensemble that has played together for decades. They are tight, intricate, and exciting to hear. Today, in particular, I could hear their roots, less in klezmer and jazz, and then klezmer and progressive rock, with all of its classical precedents. It came as no surprise when Glenn introduced one number (Free Klez?) as the band's answer to a particularly well-known Genesis suite.
The band introduced a few new numbers, at least one each by Glenn and accordionist Michael McLaughlin, and reached back through a couple of decades for some wonderful oldies. Introductions were sparse, most often "here's a new one by XXX," with even titles left off. (One new number is called "The Butcher"?) The chatter wasn't really what the audience, ranging from high school age to folks even older than myself, came to hear. It was the music, and in that, we got a treat.
In a few cases, the band explicitly noted the klezmer roots of some tunes. Most notable was their version of the Terkisher, with drummer/percussionist Eric Rosenthal starting things off with the familiar snare marching roll, and gradually becoming more complex, moving to explore new corners of dance, perhaps in an as-yet-unfamiliar dimension. Sousaphonist Jim Gray was incendiary, as was trumpeter Gary Bohan.
I apologize for not taping the show. Sometimes it is good to just listen and watch. For your part, watch the KlezmerShack calendar and make sure you don't miss the next show.
Poet Jake Marmer has a (deservedly) very positive review of a wonderful new album by Michael Winograd in this week's Forward:
Israel's first chief rabbi's redemption poetry is turned into jazz performances by two rabbis on a new CD and in clubs. Rabbi 
One of the themes of my recent reviewing concerns how much incredible music is coming from Eastern Europe. This week, as I double my output from last week, I have managed to tackle two of the most urgent CDs from my "review me now!" table. Alex Kontorovich was born in the former Soviet Union, but has grown up here in the States. While gathering a PhD in math in his spare time, he has also been one of the most exciting of the young musicians who have grown up since the revival. In Kontorovich's case, this means cooking up a delightful stew that melds klezmer with avant garde jazz in "born native" ways that older members of the Radical Jewish Music crowd can't do. His first solo CD, on Europe's "Chamsa" label is exciting, delightful, and features some of the other exciting leaders of this youthful surge. Check out 
In another mode, entirely, the most recent CD by the Polina Shepherd Vocal Experience manages to use traditional (and "traditional art song") forms to set a plethora of Yiddish poetry to music for the first time. The album is a celebration of vocal pyrotechnics, and a thorough-going pleasure, and demonstrates the originality of grounding of another artists born in the former Soviet Union (now residing in the UK). It is impossible not to love this CD, 
By rights I should ignore this rather good article in All About Jazz by Elliott Simon, our usual suspect. If I could stifle enough publicity, there would still be tickets at the box office when I roll in Monday week, hoping for a break in a long car trip from Baltimore. But that would be wrong. And the article, of course, is excellent. I long for the day when lesser-known, excellent avant garde music goes to Standing Room Only and beyond (I am avoiding the term "sell out" for obvious reasons). (John Zorn, given a small-enough venue in a major city, will always sell out. But everyone else?)
On a lovely spring day a couple of weeks ago, just after the goyishe New Year, I saw 
Andy Statman / East Flatbush Blues. Shefa Records, HORN-3001, 2006 
. Elliott Simon has also reviewed this CD for 
Marilyn Lerner / Romanian Fantasy. ML-001, 2006 
It started with a new Rough Guide release, this time, 
The problem was that I got so wrapped up in the first CD, that I had to spend time with that Idan Raichel CD that I've been meaning to write about for years: 2002's 
By now I was in trouble, so I also polished off a review of the relatively recent release of the final album by Israeli jazz masters, The Platina: 
There is something about Philadelphia Jews. I've said this before, but with the release of 
The 10th Anniversary of the first Masada material has prompted a wonderful re-examination of that work by a wide variety of artists. I confess to being among the few who find Zorn's Masada okay, but don't have a great need to own each volume. On the other hand, listening to Jon Madof and his noisemakers, er, Rashanim, transform some of the material is entirely different. 2005's 
Ladies and gentlemen, for another take on the extraordinary John Zorn/Masada material, may I offer you the totally flipped, amazing 
And, finally, in a nod to everything that I didn't have time to listen to today, all of which is at least htis good, I offer one last fusion, the world music band Asefa, house band to Sam Thomas' Brooklyn-based "Jewish Awareness through Music" organization. 
George Robinson writes frequently for the Jewish Week. He listens to an incredible diversity of music. Take a read of 
Freylach Time!, based in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina is a tradtional klezmer gem. It is also a community treasure. Now that the band has finally recorded, you can hear for yourself: 
London's Oi Va Voi has been impressing audiences from the UK to KlezKamp and everywhere in between for years. Whatever they are playing, it isn't klezmer any more, except insofar as it gets people up to dance. This new album, "Laughter Through Tears" just made the New York Time's "10 Best" list for 2003. For a change, I agree!: 
César Lerner and Marcelo Moguilevsky are two amazing musicians from Argentina. I've seen them perform in the UK and Canada. Now you can year why audiences love them and their brand of passionate klezmer infused with South American jazz. The new album, Sobreviviente, is live: 
A year with a new release from the Klezmer Conservatory Band is a good year. This latest contains many new gems - more than a taste of paradise: 
David Krakauer has released a live album, recorded last summer in his family's ancentral town, Krakow. The album, on France's notable jazz label, "
They are a trio and they don't play klezmer. But whatever it is, this is wonderful, wonderful experimental music - the sort of music that causes people like me to brave dozens of tedious mishmoshes of sound to find something this good.
Anyone who has watched him perform, or more broadly, who has seen Claudia Heuermann's "
I remember being amused by the name, "Orient Express Shnorer Klezmers" or something--a French klezmer band that seemed interesting, but I never had time to write a review. Now they have evolved into an incredibly articulate, brassy klezmer jazz ensemble. This tribute to Jewish food is a perfect introduction. Remember, when terrorists put a bomb in Paris back in the mid-eighties, it was a Jewish deli that was bombed. This is French Jewish food. Food matters. 
This is simply a pleasure. One of the most beautiful Sephardic albums I have heard in a while. Lovingly documented, beautifully sung by Hadass Pal-Yarden. 
Yes, we have another name change. The band whose name was once preceded by "Shawn's", is now simply "Kugel." Be that as it may, here's another helping of everything from the Grateful Dead to Aleynu, in 
This week's winner of the "another band that I would have happily hired for my own wedding" is KlezmerFest. The band includes a couple of members of Hasidic New Wave, but this is where they get down and make traditional 
I used to claim that the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars were the hardest working klezmer bar band in existence. They've gotten much better than that. And their mix of New Orleans funk and Jewish soul just gets better and better with 
This is almost the Jewish equivalent of Gregorian Chant, just more recent, in tune with the music of the Ottoman Empire, and, well, very Jewish. Very well done, with very good notes: 
If, like me, you thought that Adrianne Greenbaum's flute album, or the Duo Controverso albums were high points of the year, then this incredible collection of clarinet-accordion pieces based on perfect klezmer will be the next essential stop. Truly 
This is the best Klezmatics album since, oh, "Jews with Horns"? Ecstatic music, ranging from klezmer to hasidish to the edges of new Yiddish music, and words worth listening to, context worth considering. If you read the KlezmerShack, you've probably already got your copy. If not, time to 
Elliott Simon spotted this one - a review of Paul Shapiro's 
"Hi...just wanted to make those interested aware of a website that
caters to NYC experimental/improvisational music and as such does
feature/promote a fair amount of Jewish influenced jazz CDs/concerts.
It is run by Kurt Gottschalk who I met at the recent NYC visions
festival. At which, BTW, Erik Friedlander, Greg Cohen and Mark Friedman
performed an incredible set as the Masada String Trio. They were
conducted by John Zorn who sat on stage in front of the trio. Anyway,
Kurt asked me to review the new Koby Israelite CD (which has generated
some discussion in here already)...so check out the site
I got carried away. CDs were falling off the shelf, so I sat down this weekend and stayed sat down until I got several reviewed. We've got some great new Jewish music, some avant garde and jazz, some klezmer (lots of klezmer), some Sephardic and Mizrahi music, more klezmer and Yiddish folk.... That's not the whole gamut, but odds are that something in this weekend's stack will be just what you were looking for:
Rob Burger's recent Tzadik release, "
It's been a very fun week. There are new reviews up demonstrating, once again, the absurd bread of interesting music that is being sent to the KlezmerShack:
In what I hope will be the beginning of a plethora of new reviews, as I catch up with the pile of CDs that has accumulated since before my wedding, I have the first five up. All of these are great albums, but I caution folks that this is still the tip of the iceberg. In any event:
