Songlines gives four stars to "Baym Taykh"
Songlines Magazine, one of the remaining primarily-print music magazines (the refusal to get all content online and accessible is all the more puzzling with the announcement this week that No Depression is giving up the print ghost), gives The Polina Shepherd Vocal Experience / Baym Taykh a "4 star" review, in an article by Helen Beer. This is frustrating, of course, because we can only link to the magazine and encourage you to find a copy. But here is a paragraph from the review:
Polina Shepherd is a formidable all-round musician: a composer, pianist, singer and Yiddish choir leader from the former Soviet Union, who now resides in the UK. Baym Taykh (By the River), featuring the vocal quartet Ashkenazim, is innovative in its enormous range of musical expression. This CD explores tightly arranged four-part singing, voice styles which mirror instrumental ornamentation alongside more fluid choral experimentation. Solo voices and vocal duos weave in and out of the quartet, with or without accompaniment (piano, saxophone, clarinet, guitar, double-bass). Shepherd's compositions are highly original and sensitive musical settings of interesting, lesser- known Yiddish poems.