Dusty Road

Klezmer might provide the heart of this quartet’s repertoire, but they also welcome added inputs, including tango, Gypsy jazz and vintage jazz. Klezmer-ish met as members of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and have classical training as their foundation. This is no inhibitor when it comes to their expression of various traditional ethnic forms. Although arriving from different ethnic roots, these styles have an affinity that generally appeals to similar audience groups: lovers of acoustic chamber traditionalism.

Klezmer-ish thrive on mood contrasts, switching from lugubrious bowed bass resonance to playful acceleration, or painting daintily smeared clarinet alongside a panting accordion. They invariably offer a graceful delineation. The tango selections range from Carlos Gardel to Astor Piazzolla, the earliest tradition to its dismantling. The latter piece is darkly danceable, introverted and melancholic, and it was allowed more time to establish atmosphere as it nudges seven minutes.

Guitarist Rob Shepley and accordionist Concettina Del Vecchio also double as violinists, while Thomas Verity and Marcel Becker handle clarinets and upright bass. Shepley makes his own Gypsy guitar tune ‘September Sun’ a bright, optimistic skip, and adds an incongruous (yet softly shaded) electric guitar solo to ‘Doina and Street Melody’. He also contributes sepia-jazz lead vocals to ‘I’m Confessin’’, and the album’s title-track. Klezmer-ish display a strong melding of exuberant traipsing and thoughtful stasis, and any morose, introverted probing they make is eventually likely to make way for a full sense of swirling abandonment.