Veretski Pass & Joel Rubin /
The Peacock and the Sunflower
Veretski Pass & Joel Rubin /
The Peacock and the Sunflower, 2024
CD, downloads available from Borscht Beat, via Bandcamp and available from finer digital outlets everywhere.
It has been 30 years since I first met the various members of Veretski Pass, and not so many less since they began performing together. The hours spent listening to them practice, play, or in which I have beguiled time listening to their recordings? Uncountable. Individually, and even more so as a band, they make joyous music that makes me feel good. This is their third outing with clarinetist Joel Rubin. Now, with the immediacy of Ukraine under attack, they shift perspective, to an “exploration of the centuries of musical interactions between Jews and Ukrainians.” It is aided greatly by the materials in the Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project/ This is a huge treasure trove of sheet music that has only recently been made widely available. Ukraine is also home to part of the eastern Carpathians, the ancestral home of Violinist Cookie Segelstein—and the inspiration for the band's tagline: "music from the Carpathian bow."
The result is a fresh, intricate album of beautiful listening and dance music suites, representing the many facets of a Jewish wedding from accompanying guests to greeting the bride, then celebrating after the wedding ceremony. The pieces include not only the familiar, but reflect the Ukrainian-Jewish musicians awareness of the music of the world around them, from the ballroom to classical sounds. The band and Joel Rubin weave together traditional melodies with their own instincts and sensibilities, playing together with decades of anticipating each other, resulting in one of the sweetest recordings of recent years. Listen to how Joel's doina on "The pipe of Dovbush" slides into the "The tobacco cutter" and the straignt-ahead dance tune, "Titunshnayders bolarske" and thus onward. Stu Brotman's bass and drum underpin the sound as it weaves through the melodies. I can see them on stage, as they appeared here in Boston last year, with Josh Horowitz on tsimbl or button accordion, sometimes almost in a trance, sometimes intensely focused on the other musicians, as he keeps things anchored and then soars.
As Joel Rubin writes in the excellent liner notes: "These pieces form an inderrepresented kind of 19th century fusion that was part of the tapestry of what we today call 'klezmer music.'" Thus, he speaks of Klezmer as a fusion music because it has taken on trace elements of regional folk music styles, but also absorbed popular melodies and hits (much as modern klezmorim pull in everything from Tex-Mex to bluegrass in modern ceremonies). The “Novosilky March”, one of the album’s 29 tracks and barely a minute long, is a great example of this kind of musical borscht, a march that is confounding because in every other bar you seem to recognize the connection to another popular style from the surrounding cultures. And, yet, in these hands, it is also intensely klezmer.
The Sunflower is Ukraine's national flower. The Golden Peacock (goldene pavane) is a long-time Yiddish folk symbol of both youthful days gone by, and of the eternal optimism and triumphant spirit of the Jewish people. This is joyous music for troubled times, as then, and perhaps even moreso, now, when we all need "A yidishe kazatske." Enjoy and make sure you have purchased copies for all of your friends
Reviewed by Ari Davidow, 21 March 2026 .
Personnel this recording:
Cookie Segelstein: violin
Joshua Horowitz: 19th century button accordion, tsimbl (hammered dulcimer)
Stuart Brotman: string bass, baraban (drum)
Joel Rubin: C clarinet
Songs
- Sonyashnyk
- Davyd u sonyashnykakh 1:01
- Novosilky March 0:58
- Yosl Tolner's March 1:45
- Motl Reyder's March to Meet the Groom 3:40
- Chorni ochi 2:58
- Boyaner Khusid 1:24 Kremenits
- Nign of Reb Mordkhe of Kremenits 2:15
- Lipovets Rhapsody 2:04
- Kremenitser kazatske 1:39 Titunshnayder
- The Pipe of Dovbush 4:10
- Tobacco Cutter 1:44
- Titunshnayders bolgarske 2:13 Elders
- Men firt di mekhutonim 2:46
- Hasidic Kazatske for the Elders 2:08
- Oleksa in the Master's House 1:41 Road
- Dov's Table 2:53
- Slow Road 3:03
- Backwoods Kolomyika 1:56 Meadow
- Meadow Song 2:27
- Volekh of the Unknown Klezmer 1:12
- Solonyy khrustkyy 2:12 Khabno
- Streets of Khabno 3:13
- Yisroel der fidler 2:19
- Pizio's Nadvirna Kolomyika 2:07 Sisters
- Tal 1:36
- Shteynshnayders tish nign 2:32
- Marsh sester 2:13
- A yidishe kazatske 1:08 Pave
- Shlumke and Duvidl 5:04
