CD Review: KlezKanada Faculty Anthology 2006
KlezKanada Faculty Anthology. KKCD-01, 2006. Available from CDbaby.com
[Updated from the KlezKanada newsletter, 24 Aug 2006] KlezKanada
faculty include not only the most
amazing musicians playing traditional
music from Yiddish-speaking cultures
of the last century. Faculty also include
some of the most amazing musicians
playing entirely new types of Jewish
music grounded in those cultures.
Produced by former KK
scholarship kid Eric Stein, this CD is
a fundraiser for KlezKanada. All faculty contributed
tracks free of licensing charges (and
got their record companies to do the
same). It not only includes the sorts
of things one would expect: tracks by
Elaine Hoffman Watts, Steven Greenman
and the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble,
but also tracks that push the edges
from David Krakauer's Klezmer Madness
with DJ SoCalled, still-unreleased
material from Alex Kontorovich's new
band, D Minor, a cut off the brand
new Susan Hoffman-Watts CD, and
a first recording by an amazing new
collaboration by Marilyn Lerner and
Adrienne Cooper, amazing material
from Shtreiml (hint, they aren't "just"
a klezmer band any more) and Frank
London's Klezmer Brass All-Stars (personal
favorites of the KlezmerShack). I
haven't even mentioned the revolutionary
(a strong word for such
traditional-sounding music, until
you think of what has just come
together and how well it was done)
work by the Strauss/Warschauer
Duo. Other artists include Khupe,
Beyond the Pale, Pete Rushefsky/
Elli Rosenblatt, and Brave Old
World—if you haven't heard them
and made up your own mind, you
know them from the aforementioned
KlezmerShack and general
media already.
The CD production was underwritten by the Tauben Family Fund of Irwin and Sara Tauben. Says Stein, summing up succinctly: "I've seen a million klezmer sampler CDs. I think this is the most interesting—top artists performing a veritable cross section of the contemporary klezmer scene." You can read more about this CD in a longer KlezmerShack review, with links to more info about each of the featured artists. [GRADE: A+]