The Magid Chronicles

At the height of the klezmer revival in the 1980s and 90s, there were dozens of (mainly) US bands reinterpreting a fairly limited repertoire drawn from pre-war 78rpm recordings and players, such as Dave Tarras, who had emigrated to the US to be celebrated by the new generation. But the fall of the Berlin Wall, the subsequent freedom to travel and research and the opening up of archives has revealed a rich new world of Jewish music in the old world. Joshua Horowitz, with his bands Budowitz and Veretski Pass, and clarinettist Joel Rubin have been at the forefront of this, so it's very exciting to have this release of instrumental music collected by Jewish ethnographer Sofia Magid (1892-1954) in Belarus and Ukraine (then part of the USSR) in the 1920s and 30s.

Priceless though the source material is, it isn't presented in a scholarly way (although the sources are documented) but arranged into eight instrumental suites combined with folk pieces from Turkey, Greece and Romania and new compositions. The group have highlighted the irregular phrases and harmonic shifts. The music comes out of the abyss bright and fresh with vibrant squeals on Rubin's C clarinet, with Cookie Segelstein on violin, Horowitz on button accordion and cimbalom and Stuart Brotman on bass. This is a valuable treasure, brilliantly reburnished.