Expect the unexpected

Kyra Folk-Farber

Practical, enjoyable, inexpensive and easy to mail – CDs make a perfect gift. And with everything from klezmer music to Asian fusion to choose from, there's something everyone will enjoy.

Sharp and sweet

No wonder energy flows through every moment of this album. "Live performance is the lifeblood of this band," reads the first sentence of the liner notes of Beyond the Pale's Consensus – Live in Concert. An element of perfection is combined with the light-hearted humor that pervades the album. Among the lightest of the tracks is the hilarious "Oy I like she," a Yiddish theatre song from the 1930s sung with elegant wit by Josh Dolgin. Of all the pieces that show off serious skills, "Variatiuni Lautari" is perhaps the most mind-blowing, featuring accordionist Milos Popovic. Throughout the album, klezmer tradition provides the basis for tunes that incorporate too many other styles to list, including bluegrass, reggae and Romanian Gypsy folk. From the contemplative "Moses Nign" to the sprightly "Nevestino" (a Macedonian "bride's dance"), each song vibrates with a Jewish life of its own, and makes this listener want to get up and dance.

For more on the band, visit www.braveoldworld.com.

Try some Asian fusion

In Road to Kashgar, the Canada-based Orchid Ensemble introduces an exquisite world of sound. Kashgar, in western China, was the nexus of the series of trades routes known as the Silk Road, and was therefore rich with the influences of India, Persia, Central Asia and the Meditterranean. Lan Tung, Mei Han and Jonathan Bernard, the skilled young musicians that form the Orchid Ensemble, explore and connect aspects of these different areas with great artistry. They perform compositions by renowned local musician and ethnomusicologist Moshe Denburg, as well as arrangements of their own, on a wide range of instruments, many of which imitate, with painstaking emotion, the human voice. Tung, the leader of the group, sings and plays an erhu (a Chinese string instrument) and percussion, and the album features four talented guest vocalists, including Persian vocalist Amir Haghighi.

What can one expect from such a unique fusion? Besides a guaranteed feeling of satisfaction that you have heard something new and fabulous, this writer suggests it's best to sit back and expect the unexpected. Road to Kashgar is a well-produced album that takes the listener on an exciting journey.

The Orchid Ensemble is a member of Vancouver World Music Collective. Visit www.orchidensemble.com for more information.

Best klezmer around?

The voice of Michael Alpert is sometimes rough, sometimes sweet, always engaging, and always undeniably Jewish. He draws the listener into Brave Old World's Bless the Fire with restrained quietude that soon grows into passionate song.

Brave Old World is made up of four of the world's top klezmer musicians. Alpert, Kurt Bjorling, Alan Bern and Stuart Brotman collaborate to bring their individual expertise of klezmer traditions to contemporary arrangements. "Yankl Dudl," an original composition by band director Bern, develops from a simple children's song, into a Chassidic-sounding melody and finally into something entirely new that incorporates text by Yiddish songwriter Itzik Manger. The familiar and the new are conjoined.

This album is magical. Every song is thoughtfully arranged and scrupulously played.

Liner notes explaining the motivations behind each song can only be found online, however, as a link from the band's website (www.braveoldworld.com).
Despite missing this interesting information, however, the packaging of Bless The Fire is appealing; Yiddish text with both English transliteration and translation accompanying each song.

Kyra Folk-Farber, a recent music degree recipient, is now working locally as a singer and freelance writer.

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