As a fourth-generation Romanian (though not Jewish), let me say that the clarity as well as the subtle improvisation techniques BOW incorporates into their music (esp. the effective use of Romanian instruments and Romanian-Jewish songs in tracks 2 & 3) is both superb and outstanding. However, I did not care too much for track 13 (Es iz shoyn shpeyt), which to me sounded like a watered-down version of "Daybreak" from their previous "Blood Oranges" CD (which was far better). Then again, this still isn't a half-bad CD which I enjoyed listening to non-stop. Also, track 4 (Der mentsh trakht un lakht) is a real show-stopper. =)

Brave Old World is probably the most exciting band doing "new Jewish music" anywhere. They all have roots in klezmer and Yiddish folk music going back before the beginning of the klezmer revival - Stu Brotman, the bass player (also the main tsimbl player), was playing middle eastern and eastern european sounds in Kaleidoscope with David Lindley in the Sixties, for instance. The result is something that feels rooted in Ashkenazic Jewish music, but is something very new, very exciting, incredibly virtuosic, and isn't very close to klezmer anymore, at all. Alan Bern, the arranger and keyboard player brings in some riffs he recorded with Guy Klucevsek a couple of years ago. Kurt Bjorling, the clarinetist (and other tsimbl player) sounds like the Itzhak Perlman of clarinet - the fluidity and passion lying somewhere beyond classical and nign and klezmer. And Michael Alpert, violin and vocals, is still the most transformative Yiddish singer in the world today (except that here there is also English, as well). By transformative I refer not to his wonderful voice, but to the way that he has integrated singing voice and the role of the wedding jester (badkhn) into something that gives voice and words to this time and place.