Baymele / Sapling
Baymele / Sapling, 2025
CD or digital download available from Bandcamp.
I first noticed the Bay Area trio, Baymele, as the band backing up Yiddish singer Anthony Russell on his extraordinary album, Kosmopolitn. I remember chatting with the accordionist, Dmitri Gaskin, at a concert on the East Coast at the time and being impressed both with his skill on the accordion and his passion for rethinking klezmer. He mentioned that he was in a trio, but I thought little more about them until this album was released last year. In many ways it reminds me of one of my favorite bands, Veretski Pass, another trio. These kids are that good.
"Baymele" is Yiddish for "little tree." You could refer to this album as a "Sapling" (as they do!) but the playing is far more mature than that of a mere sapling. Drawing on both Jewish and non-Jewish musicians from Eastern Europe, they have created a dancing feast, one that seems to take great pleasure in recreating the steps and rhythms that they have learned in a very traditional-sounding modern idiom. I had the chance to watch the band perform in Boston this past winter and was totally impressed—so much so that I could not help breaking my recent tradition and writing about an actual live event on these pages. (I hope to do that more as I get a new underlying website written, but I'm nowhere near there yet.)
A quick glance at the song titles reveals how seriously the band takes their metaphors. Opening with the more impressionistic "Unleashed by rain," the band rapidly moves to dance tunes with "Tickled by wind" and "Wild yearnings," both drawn from pieces collected and transcribed by Polish priest and ethnomusicologist Oskar Kolberg and he team. Listening to the band talk about the music as they introduced each piece live made me conscious of how many different perspectives they harmonize in this work, from the work of klezmer violinist Motl Reyder, as collected in the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine to their own wanderings, and the aforementioned Kolberg.
Despite the intellectual vigor behind the band's research, the result was also evident at that concert: people could not sit, especially on numbers such as "Bursting buds" and "Howling colors." The audience was dancing around the tiny performance space. Excellent traditional-sounding music played by excellent musicians making it accessible to a new generation. The optimism of the closing "Shadow of life" makes me look forward to listening how this tree continues to grow.
Reviewed by Ari Davidow, 30-Jul-2026.
Performers
Matthew Stein: Violin, Viola
Misha Khalikulov: Cello
Dmitri Gaskin: Accordion
Songs
- Roots carry dreams 1:54
- Unleashed by rain 1:32
- Tickled by wind 2:24
- Wild yearnings 3:20
- Unsettling the ground 1:03
- A feast unbound 4:06
- Saplings whisper 4:36
- Twisting branches 1:35
- Bursting buds 1:31
- Howling colors 3:38
- Shadow of life 3:40
All songs arranged by Baymele. All rights reserved.
Tracks 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, and 11 are from the collections of Polish ethnomuiscologist Oskar Kolberg (1814–1890)
Tracks 4, 6 and 7 are from the Kisselhof-Makonovetsky collections from the Vernadsky Library
Tracks 5 and 10 are from recordings from the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences
