Music to accompany a new year
Tonight, of course, is selichot, the midnight prayers held on the Saturday night before the New Year. With that in mind, I have shuffled the mountains of CDs on the review table and come up with six especially wonderful recordings that most seemed perfect for tonight, and of course, for the new year:
First on the list is last year's long-awaited recording from Adrienne Cooper / Enchanted. I would have reviewed this long ago, but that would have implied that I would put it on the shelf and move on to other CDs that I need to review. No way this CD is unshuffling from the iTunes. Read more, and you'll understand why.
I couldn't stop kvelling about the Veretski Pass project, "The Klezmer Shul" back when I first saw it live over a year ago. Now the CD is out and you can hear why. A fusion of klezmer and jazz and avant garde modern music, the arrival of this CD a couple of weeks has pushed almost everything else out of mind.
This one CD summation of three monster concerts from a year ago, "Further Definitions of the Days of Awe" is a perfect summation of both the Afro-Semitic Experience's wonderful fusion of Jewish and Black sacred music, and the art of the Cantor as mostly represented by the irrepressible Jack Mendelson, but also including several other significant names. And what better time for High Holiday nusakh than the High Holidays?
All last year we got periodic new sounds from "The Nigun Project" by Jeremiah Lockwood, commissioned by the Forward. What is most striking is how much ground Lockwood covers in re-imagining the Nigun while also making deep music. I love this one.
I am a year late in my review, but at least I am right in time for the holidays with this return of Steven Greenman's sacred music persona, Stempenyu. This time, he captures "Stempenyu's Neshome". I typeset and laid out the CD, so it can't be all bad—actually, if I were as good a typesetter as Greenman is a violinist, this would be long out of print. Fortunately, you can still get your copy in time for the holidays.
Why? Because if there is one thing that will ensure repentence, and get us in the frame to approach the awe of the approaching holidays, it is a reminder of what makes us happy. This loving 2008 re-release of Danny Rubinstein's original 1958 "The Happy People is all that.
New York, NY (April 5th, 2011)-- Walking around a small and dusty record store in Brooklyn one weekend, something odd caught Rob Markoff's eye as he dug through old vinyl: "Sing Out it's Shabbos" was described as "A folk rock Sabbath celebration by the young people of Temple Shaari Emeth, Englishtown, New Jersey." Rob had never seen a record like this before, and he was instantly attracted to the colorized photos splayed across the sleeve in yellow, red and blue, depicting Chuck Taylor-clad teenagers strumming guitars against a curtained backdrop-- a sign above them reading "Give God the Nod." Markoff felt immediately nostalgic for the '70s synagogue of his youth, in which the congregants feathered their hair and the rabbis played guitar and sang in harmony, so he opened his wallet, forked over two bucks, and rushed home to listen.
You're invited!
THE SEFIRA BEAT BOX & RAP ALBUM
As 2008 comes to a close, we find ourselves living amid much uncertainty. So many of us are worried; about our finances, our security, our future. From the beginning of my career, I have tried to help people see how prayer can be a source of comfort in both good times and bad. This is particularly the case with my latest CD, As You Go On Your Way: Shacharit - The Morning Prayers (available at 
What could be more fitting on this fourth day of Chanukkah but to present this non-embeddable video of a cut from Erran Baron Cohen's new CD. Look closely, and while Chassidim carefully put up Jesus' name in Hebrew graffiti, there's also a bit of Y-Love:
Judith Pinnolis has an excellent review of this new CD, 
With Purim due this week, it is time to mention
With great frustration, I look at reviews and tips that I wanted to get online two months ago. Hold them for next year? Present them now? The latter wins. After all, these are great CDs, reviewed by Elliott Simon, which means that the reviews are thoughtful, insightful, and intelligent. So, travel back a skip in time and consider Simon's article, 
SEEDS of WONDER contains 15 new song-prayers to nourish your heart and soul. Once again, Hanna has created beautiful music that will carry you through hard times, help you prepare for Shabbat, inspire your children, and renew your connection to ancient texts.
The LeeVees / Hanukkah Rocks. 
Every so often a CD rolls in and I am so taken with it that I listen to it over and over and immediately know how much I want to get the word out. This is one of them. At first I thought, "oh, sheesh, blast from the past ... when are these folks going to grow past the Sixties". Then I realized that this was a CD put out by people whose roots in social change went back much farther than the Sixties, and haven't stopped growing, not socially, not musically. This is just a wonderful, wonderful inspiration, and great listening music, too. 
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 
One of my favorite "traditional" klezmer albums these past few months has been a delightful album from the Montreal-based band, Shtreiml. What makes this unusual, and causes me to put the word "traditional" in quotes is the use of the harmonica as the primary solo instrument. Once you hear the music, however, I trust that you, too, will be a 
Do you have a favorite Passover recording? Is there something that your kids love to listen to every year?
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:
It's about time, but we finally have a short review up of the marvellous recent CD by Laura Wetzler,