Album Notes

Exciting arrangements bring new energy to traditional (and not-so-traditional) favorites, Jewish and otherwise. Sometimes frenzied, sometimes tender, sometimes playful. Everybody’s gotta dance!

Dor L'Dor is Hebrew for "from generation to generation," which describes the make-up of the band and looks back to the practice of families of klezmer musicians passing down this rich musical tradition to their children. Dor L'Dor was born in 1999, jointly delivered by Ken and Susan Brown not long after discovering that they were "with band." The original group consisted of Ken (clarinet), Susan (piano), their three children (on trombone, bass, and tambourine), and Ken's brother on drums. As different "Dors" exit and re-enter to and from college and graduate school, students from the University of Tennessee's amazing trombone studio have joined us. Our current instrumentation is: clarinet, piano, bass, mandolin, drums, and three (sometimes four) trombones. That's right, four trombones! You'd be amazed at what possibilities that opens up for the traditional repertoire (and not just for our arrangement of "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho" with four trombones and shofar).

Dor L'Dor also describes the timeless appeal of our repertoire, from "Bulgar a la Naftule" to "When I'm Sixty-Four," and from "Goodnight Irene" to "Yossel, Yossel." But regardless of the genre, our arrangements discover fresh possibilities in this traditional music, so that even the pieces that audiences find delightfully familiar will seem brand new.