With music from: The East West Ensemble | the band Davak | Helmut Eisel & Band. Produced by Cobie Ivens
The East West Ensemble.
This Ensemble presents a fusion of mystical music composed by Kabbalists and Hasidic masters who have incorporated Kabbalistic mystical ideas into their melodies. These sacred hymns and melodies have their own unique power and energy, and go beyond conventional musical scales and styles. For centuries, liturgical poems and melodies have been interwoven with Jewish Kabbalah and mysticism, and are often considered a spiritual virtue in their own right.
CD. Sinai memories – The East West Ensemble.
LABEL: Magda (1988), code: MGD616. VIDEO
Davka.
In 1996, the band Davka released the album Lavy’s Dream on a San Francisco label. Davka is a chamber ensemble that uses Jewish folk melodies, classical music from both East and West, jazz improvisation, and elements of klezmer to produce a music that is somber and moody, yet full of sparks and wonder. Their musical sophistication combines mixed harmonic and intervallic strategies on a plane where the scales of Indian classical music intersect with those of gipsy klezmer and are governed by the modal constructions and triggered improvisation of jazz.
CD. Lavy’s Dream – Davka.
LABEL: Interworld (1996), code: 922. VIDEO
Helmut Eisel and Band.
German clarinetist and bandleader Helmut Eisel combines klezmer, swing and jazz. Eisel and company take an imaginary journey through time and space in a quirky, friendly salute to klezmer, mixed with W.C. Handy, Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, all with a Brechtian feel.
The photoshopped black-and-white cover of the CD suggests the group headlined the Cotton Club in New York City, but for this album they never got further than the studios of Saarland Radio in Germany. No matter. This is music for rootless cosmopolitans.
CD. Klezmer at the Cotton Club – Helmut Eisel and Band.
LABEL: Westpark Music (2006), code: 87134. VIDEO
Producer: Cobie Ivens
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