Album Notes

THE BRIGHT RIVER is a hip-hop retelling of Dante's Inferno by a traditional storyteller, Tim Barsky, with a live soundtrack. performed by some of the best hip-hop and klezmer musicians in the Bay Area. A dizzying theatrical journey through a world spinning helplessly out of control, the show sends audiences on a mass-transit tour of the Afterlife. Guided by a fixer named Quick, and moving through an urban landscape that is at once both intensely real and fantastic, it is a cinema verite look at life and death in America.

The live recording captures the blend of hip-hop, physical theatre and folklore, reflecting Barsky's training as a Jewish storyteller and oral historian. Tim is also the world's first beatbox flutist, capable of producing up to 8 rhythms and melodies at the same time. Bassist and multi-instrumentalist Safa Shokrai, cellist Jess Ivry, and beatboxer/ vocal percussionist Kid Beyond (SF Weekly's "Best Beatboxer") bring a diverse set of skills and traditions to bear.

"The music of the Everyday Ensemble is unceasingly compelling." - SF Chronicle

"An amazing mish-mash of genres and style blend together in ways that up until now seemed unimaginable, producing a surrealism-meets-street edge that is enormously entertaining and unbelievably creative." - SF Examiner

"The Bright River is spoken, sung, and rapped by Tim Barsky, a traditional Jewish storyteller, beatbox flutist, and skater, who calls it "a fairytale for people who can hardly bear to believe in fairytales any more." Barsky is backed up by the Everyday Ensemble -- cellist Jess Ivry, bassist Safa Shokrai, and beatboxer Kid Beyond, aka Andrew Chaikin -- in a show that is as much a hip-hop-inflected jazz performance with vocals as it is storytelling. Together they mash up hope and rage, romance and cynicism." - East Bay Express