Adrienne Cooper & Marilyn Lerner /
All Silent Things Speak Today

She was a fabulous teacher, one of the people most responsible for the Klezmer "revival" that began in the 1970s/1980s. But, more than anything, Adrienne Cooper was the amazing voice. Her last project was to make Anna Margolin's poetry available as artsong. I vividly remember an early Sunday morning popping into the car in Boston and driving down to a Sunday afternoon "klezmer brunch" at NYC's City Winery to hear the project. Finally, her musical and life partner, jazz/experimental music pianist Marilyn Lerner has found a way to make those amazing tapes available. Culled from live performances, this recording is one of life's great pleasures. The accompanying booklet includes a wonderful biographical essay that Cooper wrote about Margolin for Bridges. The whole project is a labor of love, and reflects the love and caring that initiated it, led to Lerner's careful and evocative music, Cooper's voice.

Margolin was a poet of feelings, of relationships. Listen to "Demons whistled sadly," in which a visit to the garden becomes "I went into the garden. It was like a wild cloud. / Demonas whistled sadly." I am suddenly reminded that the poet spent the last part of her life in self-exile in the apartment she shared with her common-law husband/caretaker, poet Reuven Iceland. To me, Margolin's words are to be savored with good coffee or an excellent glass of wine, seated, contemplatively, in a comfortable nook. Sometimes that is for the quiet, sometimes to protect oneself from the fearsome harshness of some of her lyrics.

On this recording, sometimes the words are in English, as in Cooper's re-translation of "Shlonke shifn" (Slender ships). Lerner's music, creates that nook and that quite contemplation I mentioned, above. Even when the words and music storm, as on "Harbst," (Autumn) where the music echoes the shriek of Autumn, first in English, and then with an entirely different accompaniment, English, the words and music are melded in a delight of cascading notes and tones, flowing, caressing the poetry with Cooper's operatic voice.

I am startled to realized that one track, "The gangster" was recorded at Ashkenaz, and that I was at that performance! One of the few tracks to feature additional instrumentation, the real? metaphorical gangster: "The street spread out like a golden harp / That his wild fingers rush to play" as the sax shrieks with menace. There is also a beautiful intro by Frank London on "Slow and shining."

Slow and shining
You bent your forehead to mine
You sank your black fire into
My blue fire

And my room filled with summer
And my room filled with night
I closed my bright, tear-filled eyes
I cried softly in my late summer.

A hundred years after their writing, two decades after her poems became available in a collected English translation, Margolin and Cooper brought her back to life. Releasing this recording, Lerner has, in a sense, also brought Cooper back to life. "[we] receive a visit from one of the ushpizin who settles in to tell a story you need to hear, a story you need to share. S'iz a m'chaye.

Reviewed by Ari Davidow, 13 March 2026.

Songs

2. All Silent Things Speak Today 2:37
3. Perhaps This Was My Happiness 3:08
4. Harbst—Autumn 1:42
5. Autumn 1:19
6. Slender Ships 3:27
7. The Gangster 5:41
8. Demons Whistled Sadly 3:40
9. Night Entered My House 3:41
10. A City by the Sea 4:00
11. Girls in Crotona Park 2:22
12. Slow and Shining 5:05

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