the KlezmerShack

This was announced this Fall by Joel Rubin, and the CD is now available at all the US outlets (amazon.com, etc., as well as from Wergo, in Europe. The entire Wergo series is also available from our favorite Jewish music vendor, Simon Rutberg of Hatikvah Music. E-mail Simon for an excellent deal on all or parts of the series (or any other Jewish music).

We are pleased to announce the release of the 11th production in the Wergo Jewish Music Series, edited by Joel Rubin and Rita Ottens:

Aneinu! Hasidic-Orthodox Music from the Festival of the Torah in Jerusalem, featuring the Moshe "Moussa" Berlin Ensemble (Schott Wergo SM 1628-2).

The CD received a German Record Critics' Prize (4th Quarter 2008). It was released in the US on Dec. 9 2008, coinciding (approximately) with Moussa's 70th birthday.

Aneinu! contains repertoire from the Israeli hasidic-orthodox klezmer tradition. The field recordings of Israel's preeminent klezmer clarinetist, Moussa Berlin, were made by ethnomusicologist Joel Rubin in the Beit Ha-Rav Kook yeshiva in Jerusalem during the Second Hakafot ceremony celebrating the end of the holiday Simchat Torah in 1992. They show the vital role that the music of the klezmorim and the ecstatic singing of nigunim (melodies of spiritual elevation) play among orthodox Jews, displaying at the same time a microcosm of the variety of ethnic and cultural influences to be found in the musical traditions of Israel today. Accompanied by electric guitar, synthesizer and drums, Berlin's clarinet melds with the ecstatic, impassioned, loud and exuberant singing of the students of the yeshiva.