Daniel Strong Godfrey – Toward Light
Cassatt String Quartet; Ursula Oppens; Eliot Fisk; Nicole Johnson
New Focus Recordings FRC467 (newfocusrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/daniel-strong-godfrey-toward-light-three-quintets)

Pianist Ursula Oppens, cellist Nicole Johnson and guitarist Elliott Fisk join the New York-based Cassatt String Quartet in three quintets by American Daniel Strong Godfrey (b.1949).

Godfrey says his piano quintet from 2006, Ricordanza-Speranza (Recollection-Hope) “is shaped by a sense that both memory and hope remain elusive and at odds.” Adagio poco rubato begins tentatively, builds to an intense climax, then subsides, returning to the opening uncertainty. Con fuoco’s swirling strings and Oppens’ percussive outbursts are followed by lyrical calm. The brief Interlude, a cadenza for solo piano, leads to the finale, Adagio poco rubato; con anima, a celebratory dance gradually fading to silence.

The title of the string quintet. To Mourn, To Dance (2013), is taken from Ecclesiastes’ list of opposites, each thing having its own “season.” The grim Prelude is an adagio filled with dense, chromatic textures. Danza is transparent, graceful and wistful. Interlude, another adagio, spotlights the “extra” cello’s extended lament. The vigorous Fugue-Tarantella, with violins cheering over grinding cello strokes, ends the work in thrilling fashion. 

Godfrey’s dark-hued guitar quintet, Toward Light (2023), was composed, he writes, amid widespread “fear, exasperation and tenuous optimism.” Constantly shifting in tonality, meter and string sonorities, it describes, says Godfrey, “a journey from faltering light and prayerful expression” (Dusk: Prayer) “to a somewhat macabre minuet-like dream music” (Midnight: Dance), the Cadenza for solo guitar leading to the finale (Dawn: Escape) “that runs desperately toward the light – one hopes – of a better day.”

Listen to 'Daniel Strong Godfrey: Toward Light' Now in the Listening Room

Penumbra
Gamelan Alligator Joy
Songlines (songlines.com/release/penumbra)

Founded in 1990, Gamelan Alligator Joy is a Vancouver area composer-musician collective here represented by 13 musicians. Fifteen years in the making, Penumbra is its third release. During that time five longtime composers of the group – Michael O’Neill, Mark Parlett, Sutrisno Hartana, Andreas Kahre, Sam Salmon – kept busy composing and workshopping new works.

Seven new compositions for Javanese gamelan gadhon are featured, exploring the expressive potential of gamelan to render “a multiplicity of emotions and thoughtscapes.” 

The opening track, Hartana’s Bahureksa, incorporates instruments and songs from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi skilfully blended with Javanese gamelan, plus solo and choral sections. As a Javanese-born gamelan player, teacher and composer in Canada, Hartana’s inspiration is culled from his own extensive cross-cultural musical journeys.

Parlett’s Dice Over Easy superimposes his minimalistic rhythmic, structural and harmonic language onto Javanese tonal modes and performance practices. His compositional strategy here features instruments timbrally outside the gadhon’s tuned and untuned percussion. An example: high keening suling slendro solos. Softly plucked strings of the ukelin (a rare hybrid zither) also meander across the soundscape, while occasional fretless bass lines add the frisson of surprise.

Peregrinations in Palindromnia is Parlett’s through-composed meditation for gadhon, driven by the eloquently dramatic poetic narration by DB Boyko. Spare music and text evoke aspects of place, transience, death and return in the natural world, finding solace in a sense of suspension.

Salmon’s terse 96 Tiers references the 1966 proto-punk song 96 Tears, yet musically it quickly develops into a richly sonorous process piece, divided into 96-beat sections. 96 Tiers also pays homage to early minimalist music – roots of which were coloured by gamelan.

Don’t adjust your playback volume: Kahre’s Let N = N requires musicians to play instruments with their fingers, dispensing with typical mallets. This focus on delicate tactility extends to the bowed string rebab melodies sensitively played by Hartana woven through the gauzy percussive textures.

O’Neill’s ambitious 15-minute Mode of Attunement features a prominent part for retuned piano dynamically rendered by Rory Cowal in dialogue with the gadhon. O’Neill cautions that it’s “not a concerto for retuned piano, [but rather it] artfully explores subtleties around integrating the two forces.” A totally unexpected yet effective outsider instrument here is the jaw harp, outlining piano rhythms in one movement. The work takes us on a “nocturnal journey in 11 episodes filtered through hypnogogic consciousness.”

O’Neill’s Grotto: Ventriloquial Investigations on the other hand is a Beckettian spoken-word mini-opera with O’Neill voicing both himself and Seamus, his wisecracking baritone puppet. Adapting original and borrowed texts, it’s set in an underground grotto evoking both Plato’s cave and Jung’s unconscious. We hear songs, jokes, instrumental gamelan interludes and philosophical sparring, all “circling around the ultimate unanswerable questions.”

Penumbra stands as Gamelan Alligator Joy’s latest statement of its long commitment to creating new music beyond the received borders of Javanese gamelan genre, style and approach. Both an eloquent summing up of Vancouver’s gamelan founding generation and a collection of accomplished postclassical music looking to the future, Penumbra represents a high-water mark on Canada’s gamelan-centred music shores.

Dreaming in Gamelan
Bill Brennan; Andy McNeill w/Hugh Marsh
Independent (brennanmcneill.bandcamp.com/album/dreaming-in-gamelan)

Traditional West Javanese gamelan sounds are explored in new memorable, soothing soundscapes by Canadian composers/multi-instrumentalists Bill Brennan and Andy McNeill, with electric violinist Hugh Marsh contributing on a few tracks. Brennan’s wide-ranging percussion, piano performance career includes being a member of the Toronto-based Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan. Film/television composer McNeill (bass, electronics, etc.) is also fascinated by the gamelan. 

Brennan and McNeill worked together scoring a CBC documentary in 2001 and then decided to record their compositions one week in Brennan’s living room on borrowed Evergreen Club traditional gamelan instruments. After studio mixing and overdubbing, it was put away and untouched for years. A recent Evergreen Club performance at Massey Hall inspired Brennan and McNeill to expand and complete this release.

The first nine short tracks are about three minutes each. Tunnels of Light introduces the listener to diverse ambient sounds, starting with a repeated single note. A form of gong is followed by a repeated gamelan melody. The blending of traditional gamelan with western instrumental and electronic sounds,  rhythms, dynamics and textures creates a unified soundscape to single note fade. Title track Dreaming In Gamelan has a calming, reflective repeated melodic start. Attention-grabbing minimalist lines and multi-layering of instruments ground this sparse/gentle to dense/sonic composition. The closing ten-minute Reverie is mysterious and comforting, featuring held notes.

Brennan and McNeill highlight the gamelan with sparse bell tones, ambient jazz, experimental musical styles, electroacoustics, instrumentation, arrangements, improvisations and unexpected effects, producing hypnotic new sounds to relish!

The Soundmakers Project
Ineke Vandoorn; Marc van Vugt; Christine Duncan; The Soundmakers
Baixim Records (baiximrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-soundmakers-project-2)

Canadian vocalist Christine Duncan has covered the waterfront when it comes to inventing ways to use a human voice and is no stranger to virtually all styles of music. Born into a travelling fundamentalist Pentecostal musical family, she wove her way through R+B, blues, jazz and contemporary opera before she hit the ground running when she arrived in Toronto from Vancouver in the early 2000s, eventually landing in the improvising scene. 

In 2007, Duncan and her partner, drummer Jean Martin, applied for a grant for her to develop a vocabulary of hand signals for improvising choir and to assemble a group on a more permanent basis. Their successful application allowed the duo to develop the concept of the Element Choir, both by taking cues from other vocal improvising directors before her such as Butch Morris, the London Improvisers Orchestra, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn and others, as well as creating Duncan’s own unique conducting style, and her hand signals have become a fluid and organic response to her musicality. 

Her joy of sharing her love of sound and community is profoundly evident as well as her expert leadership and experience (Duncan is also an active educator, teaching in the jazz programs at Humber College and the University of Toronto since 2003). For anyone not familiar with the choir, she leads the group of non-professional vocalists into challenging soundscapes of noises, chatters, whispers and wails all with practiced hand gestures and signals, and has continued to refine her skills to become the world leader in structured improvisational vocal ensemble. 

In walks The Soundmakers, a Dutch Grammy-winning duo Ineke Vandoorn, vocalist, and Marc van Vugt, guitarist, who lead an ensemble of 50 improvising (again, non-professional) vocalists, and who witnessed Duncan’s work with the Element Choir. By 2024 they invited Duncan to combine their music with vocal soundscapes under her direction with their own Soundmakers, leading to the creation of the Soundmakers Project. Featuring compositions by Vandoorn and van Vugt, Duncan so expertly guides the group that on occasion – such as the first track Hatfield 22 – it’s hard to believe the sounds coming from the group. 

The third track Soundmakers Choir Improvisation demonstrates the range of colour Duncan draws from the group. The Collar is a dense, humorous collection of expressive meows and melodies that perfectly backs the jazzy libretto and guitar breakdown. A truly beautiful track La Caresse is expansive and ethereal along with the final Soundmakers Improv 1. The album is a beautiful showcase of music and community, and kudos to the Dutch group for bringing Duncan together with their compositions. 

To see Christine Duncan live is to marvel at the skill, musicianship and sheer joy she imparts. Check out the teaser video for this album online, or find her with the Element Choir collaborations with Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq and the Toronto Symphony.

Listen to 'The Soundmakers Project' Now in the Listening Room

I am Here
Steve Amirault
Independent (steveamirault.bandcamp.com/album/i-am-here)

Montreal-based pianist, composer, vocalist and B3 organist, Steve Amirault has been referred to by noted journalist Paul Wells as “a Grand Master,” and nothing could be more true or well-deserved. Nova Scotia born Amirault has graced international stages with an array of iconic jazz musicians, including the late Sheila Jordan, Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman and Eddie Gomez. In his new recording, Amirault plums his emotional and artistic depths with 12 original solo piano compositions that run the gamut stylistically, often incorporating subtle influences of his jazz heroes, which include Monk, Bud Powell, Ahmad Jamal and the Michel Petrucciani. Having begun his musical journey as a drummer, Amirault easily imbues every track here with a palpable rhythmic backbone as well as nearly unbearably gorgeous melodic lines. 

The programme opens with Wednesday Waltz. Sweet, lilting and intricate – Amirault’s fingers and ridiculous chops literally dance across the keys, on this nostalgia-tinged track. Of special beauty is Empathy – stark, moving and rife with almost Gospel-like motifs that Amirault utilizes to explore the uplifting process and sometimes the bitter dues of being an essentially empathetic human being at this time, on this earth.  

Another stand-out is Soho Dreams, a lyrical, groovy reverie that paints a picture of a beloved NYC neighborhood – with all of its fabulous contradictions. The deeply moving title track closes the project, and wraps this stunner of a recording with Amirault’s incandescent and soulful art – a heady cocktail of stunning technique, emotion and a wealth of complex musical ideas fearlessly and lovingly presented. Bravo!

Listen to 'I am Here' Now in the Listening Room

It’s All So
Brad Turner; Trio Plus One
Cellar Music CMF090924 (bradturner.bandcamp.com/album/it-s-all-so)

Much of what I wanted to discuss about It’s All So is already covered in the album’s detailed and eloquent liner notes. The music speaks for itself too, and hopefully this review provides context in the form of a glowing recommendation for those who have yet to listen.

Brad Turner is a stalwart Vancouver-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and educator who I first heard on trumpet. Unlike some who merely dabble on other instruments, Turner brings a unique and masterful voice to any tool of expression. That tool is piano on It’s All So, and the “plus one” of Turner’s Trio Plus One is percussionist Jack Duncan.  

Duncan is a creative guest, joining Turner’s longstanding rhythm section of Darren Radtke on bass and Bernie Arai on drums. The piano trio format offers ample creative space, and Duncan adds steady grooves without “boxing in” any of the album’s eight selections. Turner penned each composition for the musicians present, save for an arrangement of Cole Porter’s Love For Sale that is unique enough to sound like another original. 

Jazz is at the heart of It’s All So, but the album features grooves equally appropriate under the “Latin” umbrella. The compositions and playing remind me of Woody Shaw and Clare Fischer at times, among other artists who expertly fused these genres. This could suggest a departure from the hard-swinging catalogue of Cellar Music, but after repeated listening the album fits their mandate to a tee. This is a unique and memorable addition to Turner’s discography.

Noam Lemish – There’s beauty enough in being here
Noam Lemish; Sundar Viswanathan; Andrew Downing; Nick Fraser
TPR Records (noamlemish.bandcamp.com/album/theres-beauty-enough-in-being-here-2)

In mid-November 2025, I attended the album release concert for jazz pianist/composer Noam Lemish’s newest project, There’s Beauty Enough in Being Here. The house was full, the energy warm and inviting, the music-making superb and uplifting! While indeed there was beauty enough in being “there” in person, this “gently ravishing” (an irresistible one-sheet quote) CD effortlessly conveys those same elements of warmth, grace and beauty.

A consummate musician on every front – player, composer, accompanist, collaborator, innovator, pedagogue – Lemish continues on his “trademark” multicultural, boundary-expanding, genre-blurring journey with this album. Inspired by the “be in, and appreciate, the moment” sentiment of Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa’s poem titled, Beyond the Bend in the Road, the nine captivating, original tracks incorporate jazz idioms, Middle Eastern sounds, Classical music and Himalayan folk tunes. 

Joining Lemish are first call musicians on the Canadian jazz scene: Sundar Viswanathan on saxes and bansuri, bassist Andrew Downing and Nick Fraser, drums. With ease and sensitivity, this all-star quartet delivers the contemplative, mysterious, expansive and hopeful sounds and sensibilities that permeate the album. Aviv (Hebrew for the spring season) is lyrical and moody, with gorgeous overlays between sax and piano. Kadrin Gatshor (Gratitude) is a beautifully melodic homage to the Bhutanese people. About 20 years ago, Lemish wrote It Was There All Along, and recently “rescued” the then untitled piece from languishing in an old, composition notebook. It is lovely. So are the remaining tracks, particularly the stunning, Schumann-inspired The Poignancy of Now.

There’s more than enough beauty here.

Put It There
BARI-ed Alive
Cornerstone Records CRST CD 171 (cornerstonerecordsinc.com/pages/cat171.html)

Most jazz fans will remember Gerry Mulligan and Pepper Adams as two famous baritone sax players but otherwise this large full-throated instrument is usually consigned to the end of the saxophone line in a big band. But we now have BARI-ed Alive, a Toronto jazz sextet featuring Alex Dean, Shirantha Beddage and Chris Gale all playing the baritone saxophone, with Jeff McLeod on Hammond B3 organ, Andrew Scott on guitar and Morgan Childs on drums. 

Put it There is the new release from this group and contains nine original tunes all written by members of the band. The album begins with the high energy and quick tempos of Abraca-Pocus and Baritone Boogaloo which provide great grooves and some high-voltage solos. Blues for Owl is slower and bluesier with lots of feeling and a few growls in the solos. Turrentrane is (I assume) a play on the two tenor sax players Stanley Turrentine and John Coltrane and its beginning seems inspired by Smoke On the Water. 

The tunes are all fairly standard, and offer not surprises but many swinging delights. The “bari” sax is a remarkably expressive instrument and the team of Dean, Beddage and Gale swing hard and blow the heck out of all the tunes. Their rhythm section is also rock solid; McLeod gives us many tasty organ solos and Scott’s guitar intro to Don’t Call Me Victor is simply gorgeous. May I suggest their next album be titled: Three Baris, No Waiting?

Listen to 'Put It There' Now in the Listening Room

Saku Mantere – Divine Apology
Saku Mantere; Various artists
Orchard of Pomegranates (sakumantere.bandcamp.com/album/divine-apology)

So-called universal themes are bridges, not capsules. They serve to connect and relate our lived experiences, not fold them into each other neatly. Divine Apology is a wonderful network of these bridges. Pulling from the written works of artists from various disciplines including Norman Cristofoli, Dylan Thomas and Kalervo Hämäläinen, the sonic poetry of Saku Mantere breathes new meaning into every line. 

Lapin Äidin Kehtolaulu turns a lullaby into a fleet-footed waltz in which everyone involved rips their solos with such a vigorous fervor that invokes the mother-child dynamic found in the song’s lyrics racing through eternity. Mantere’s vocals personify care and wistfulness, each syllable its own delectable morsel, vibrato conveying more compassionate feeling for the song’s address with each passing beat. There is a bittersweetness constantly permeating through how harmony interacts with lyric, lines like “the circle of life is closing in” from Mantere’s own Not Fair being more an observation or acceptance than a lament. 

On a personal note, I love albums that feel like windows into the room in which they were recorded, and as Adrian Vedady takes an eloquent bass solo while Kate Wyatt paints in the margins with her comping, I feel like I can find physical refuge in the surrounding calm. Divine Apology is a window through and through. It is a window into familiar notions of love, grief, smallness, earnestness and connection. It is a window into how these notions tint Mantere’s world.

Trio of Bloom
Craig Taborn; Nels Cline; Marcus Gilmore
Pyroclastic Records PR42 (trioofbloom.bandcamp.com/album/trio-of-bloom)

Besides the abundantly obvious fact that it is scientifically impossible to go wrong with this lineup of musicians, one striking thing about the debut recording of this super trio is how it stands as a testament to how much more experimenting and boundary-obliterating still remains to be done in careers this storied. Each musician is a loose spigot of cascading ideas and moments of profound motivic force, the union of which gives each improvisation a shapeshifting quality. 

Signposts reached in soft alignment, growths develop organically rather than methodically, an unspoken knowing that renders even the dizzying Unreal Light five-five-four-four metric cycle intrinsic to owning a pulse. Craig Taborn’s keys and Nels Cline’s guitar bite, ravage, warmly embrace, coalesce, and repel the air, while drummer Marcus Gilmore channels fluid deposits of universal energy, dancing currents through the mind’s eye. Music that finds itself woven into the fabric of everything that has been and will follow, all while finding its own outpost in the midst of the living. Even as time is manipulated by phrases that feel unsusceptible to the trappings of any bar lines, it is seldom wasted. When a song like Diana is three minutes, it need not run a second longer, even as sentences run on without periods, and a simple gesture contains all the narrative depth of an epic. 

Trio of Bloom is music for rare moments of stillness in our world, letting one’s imagination run amok, and for awesome music’s sake.

A Life in the Day Of
Gabriella Cancelli; Lori Freedman; Stefano Giust; Giorgio Pacorig; Paolo Pascolo
Setola Di Maiale SM 4950 (setoladimaiale.net/catalogue/view/SM4950)

Souvenir of a busperson’s holiday in Italy by Canadian bass clarinetist Lori Freedman, the two long improvisations that make up A Life in the Day Of find her in buona compagnia with sympatico local improvisers flutist Paolo Pascolo, trumpeter Gabriele Cancelli, percussionist Stefano Giust and pianist Giorgio Pacorig.

Introduced by keyboard clips and trumpet yelps, the players pound, project and pepper the expositions with all manner of distinct, dissonant and defining sounds while maintaining a logical flow. As Freedman’s thickened chalumeau snores and clarion tongue stops emerge, she infrequently trades places with Pacorig’s percussive key clips and strummed strings or Giust’s crunches and shuffles to preserve the continuum. Cancelli’s brassy grace notes constantly move up the scale when not intersecting with the others for linear motion, while Pascolo’s flute trills create ethereal counterpoint, except for rare pivots when his bass flute pressure reaches a low-pitch ostinato.  

As passages shift from mellow to multiphonics, each player seems determined to expose every variable tone from plunger growls to ascending peeps to distant breaths. Climax is reached during the final section of A Life In The Day Of (Part II). The pianist’s shift to indicative swing draws out drum rim shots and vocalized half-valve trumpeting so that even Freedman’s intense split tones fit into the finale. 

With its concluding rhythmic emphasis and continuous sound explorations the session fascinates and proves how improvisers from different countries can efficiently reach the same groove.

Unseparate
Webber/Morris Big Ban
Out of Your Head Records OOYH 037 (outofyourheadrecords.com/news/2025/7/22/pre-order-webbermorris-big-band-unseparate-ooyh-037)

Recalibrating big band music for the 21st century with sophisticated arrangements and solo space for most members of this 19-piece New York ensemble are two expatriate Canadians, who co-lead, conduct and play tenor saxophones and flutes: Ontario’s Angela Morris and B.C.’s Anna Webber. 

Led by Morris and Webber since 2015 and continuing the sonic experiments of the band’s debut release from 2019, Unseparate includes the four-part Just Intonation Etudes For Big Band; segments of the title suite interspaced throughout the disc; and three standalone compositions. The latter pseudo-concertos include interludes like Yuhan Su’s vibraphone resonations, alto saxophonist Jay Rattman’s tongue stops and Jen Baker’s trombone plunger growls. An unabashed blues, balanced on Dustin Carlson’s guitar twangs Microchimera is most notable as brass and reed sections bolster and buttress Webber’s flute trills and Jake Henry’s heraldic trumpet screeches.

Even more assured are the long form compositions, especially the Etudes. Morris’ clarion reed stops introduce the throbbing theme which steadily ascends alongside group dynamics as contrapuntal sequences dominate the brass and reeds. While the tracks inflate and ascend, tolling vibe slaps, Jeff Davis’ drum ruffs and Lisa Parrott’s baritone saxophone burbles preserve linear evolution as overlapping respites from Tim Vaughn’s plunger trombone blasts and squeezed brass triplets. Before dissolving into cacophony, sections return to straight-ahead emphasis with artful reed pulses and percussion thumps. 

An exemplar of cultivated big band writing and playing, Unseparate may have been created in the U.S., but like the Auto Pact needs Canadian input to be put into motion.

Walkin’ Each Other Home
Clela Errington
Independent (clelaerrington.bandcamp.com/album/walkin-each-other-home)

In today’s musical world of autotune, synthesized everything and the outright fakery of AI, having a new album of genuine artistry and stripped-down arrangements is a refreshing treat. Imagine someone simply sitting at a mic with an acoustic guitar and singing good songs. What a concept. But that’s exactly what veteran singer-songwriter-guitarist, Clela Errington has done.

Yes, she’s gotten a little help from some very musical friends, most notably blues/roots master Jimmy Bowskill, who does co-producer duty, and plays guitar, mandolin and bass. Other main musicians include Steve O’Connor on keyboards and accordion and Ian McKeown on drums and percussion. But it’s Errington’s soulful vocal interpretations that carry the album, which explores a few styles, but leans heavily toward slow and mid-tempo, bluesy numbers. It opens strongly with a traditional song, I Know You Rider, that kind of puts me in mind of early Stevie Winwood. Careless Love is another traditional song, but in more of a country vein, with a distinct lilt. Got to Make a Change Blues, is a fun sassy cover of a Memphis Minnie blues shuffle designed to get you up on your feet.  

If you’ve not yet heard of Errington, despite this being her fifth album, you could be forgiven, since she spent much of her adult life in Prince Edward Island. But she’s been back in the Toronto area for a while now and can regularly be seen gracing stages here with her warm presence. She often performs with her daughter, singer Jocelyn Barth, who lends her voice to two tracks here, including the Errington original that closes out the album, Full Moon Dark Time, and the blend is exquisite.

Overall, Errington’s warm vocals and accessible style, along with the intimate recording technique, make Walkin’ Each Other Home feel like a good friend is sitting right over there singing these songs just for us.

Mi Pequeña
Eliana Cuevas; Jorge Glem
Lula World Records (lulaworldrecords.ca/product-page/mi-penqueña-by-eliana-cuevas)

Venezuelan/Canadian/International chanteuse and composer, Eliana Cuevas, has long been acclaimed for her previous six well-received albums and dynamic live performances, as well as for her vision as a bandleader and composer. Her choices are rife with diverse cultural and cross-ethnic musical influences. Cuevas’ Mi Pequena (My Little Girl) was created in collaboration with the well-respected multi-Latin GRAMMY-winning cuatro player, Jorge Glem. The cuatro (sometimes mis-identified as a Ukelele by the un-enlightened) is at the very core of indigenous Venezuelan music, and Glem is one of the foremost cuatro artists to be found on the globe.  

The opening title track was composed by former Cuevas collaborator, the late, iconic Aquilas Baez and features a diaphanous intro by Glem, which is joined by Cuevas’ sensual, sibilant and resonant voice, dancing through this lovely, melodic, folk-inspired composition. Cuevas is blessed with not only a supple vocal instrument, but is also a master communicator – beyond language or culture – existing in the shared musical stratosphere. On La Partida (Simon Diaz/Carlos Bennett) Glem reaches levels of artistry and technique on the cuatro which are breathtaking, as is Cuevas’ powerful and gymnastic vocal. 

Other exquisite tracks include Henry Martinez’ muy romantico ballad, Venme a Buscar. Cuevas exposes her very soul here, using vocal dynamics like a paintbrush. On Glem’s delightful Cambur Pinton, rapid fire Spanish lyrics rendered exquisitely by Cuevas intensify the rhythmic dynamism of Glem and the under-exposed scope of the essential cuatro. Cueva’s only composition here, El Quarto Venezolano (The Venezuelan Fourth) is a stunner, with Cuevas on piano, re-enforcing the rhythmic spine, with Glem’s cuatro and Cuevas’ sumptuous voice weaving a powerful Venezuelan spell that will captivate all listeners of this finely crafted and exceptionally performed recording.

Listen to 'Mi Pequeña' Now in the Listening Room

Schmaltz & Pepper
Schmaltz & Pepper
Independent SP01 (schmaltzandpepper.com/store)

During a “random” chamber music gig he played back in November 2023, stellar musician and principal TSO clarinettist, Eric Abramovitz, commented to fellow virtuoso, violinist Rebekah Wolkstein, that he had always wanted to be in a klezmer band. Wolkstein’s reaction? “Let’s do it!” And right there, she got out her computer, started scheduling stuff and Schmaltz & Pepper was born.

Six months later, the band was playing concerts and summer festivals, wowing audiences with their dazzling mastery and musicianship, performing original, sassy, sophisticated and, yes, schmaltzy (in a good way) material in breathtaking arrangements! 

And now we have their brilliant, eponymous debut CD. Rounding out this klezmer supergroup are three more top-tier, award winning musicians: Drew Jurecka on violin and bandoneon; pianist Jeremy Ledbetter; and Michael Herring, bass. Their jazz, swing, classical, Roma and European folk music infused brand of klezmer is virtuosic, soul-stirring, innovative and just plain fun! The track titles, alone, are entertaining: Mozart the Mensch, Gefilte Fugue, Tango Shmango, Manischewitz Mazurka, to name a few. And then there’s the rip-snorting (pun intended) The Yiddish Bullfighter. Wolkstein, also an accomplished vocalist, treats us to both a humorous lament about trying to find the perfect (non-musician) man in I’m Sorry Mama, and a delightful, “Modern Major General-esque” romp in Evil Eye. 

Schmaltz & Pepper have upended the traditional boundaries of klezmer music, joyously Stirring the Pot (see track 1) on the Jewish and world music stage.