CDs >> Winter and Winter Dus gezang fin geto Lodzh/Song of the Lodz Ghetto Recorded live in Bordeaux, this is the first Brave Old World CD to appear on the prestigious Winter & Winter label, famous worldwide for the highest standards in recording quality, design, and concept. Developed over the last 15 years, Song of the Lodz Ghetto is a unique musical work, a song cycle in which memory and imagination freely interact to create a Proustian journey between present and past. At the center are Brave Old World's arrangements of the rare Jewish street and cabaret songs from the Nazi ghetto of Lodz, Poland, 1940-44. Leading through the Lodz repertoire like stepping-stones through the river of memory are Brave Old World's own original compositions, reflections on 17 years of performing Jewish music. Michael Alpert's moving Berlin 1990 forms the emotional and musical counterpoint to the passionate and ironic street songs of the bard of the Lodz ghetto, Yankele Herszkowicz. A musical and spiritual journey of resistance, love, and reconciliation. The superior recording quality of this CD is matched by outstanding cover art by Steve Byram and Warren Linn, as well as detailed song texts and liner notes in Yiddish, English, and German. Excerpts are available below for downloading! The Real Audio files are for 56K modem downloads, the mp3 files are for broadband (DSL, Cable, etc.) downloads. >> Listen to samples from "Dus gezang fin geto Lodzh/Song of the Lodz Ghetto," BOW's newly released CD: 01 Rumkovski Khayim ... mp3 | Real Media Yankele Herszkowicz's most famous song, sung by Lodz survivor Ya'akov Rotenberg 02 Lodz Overture ... mp3 | Real Media a new piano solo (Bern) 03 A gants fayn mazltov ... mp3 | Real Media wedding music of pre-war Poland (trad/BOW) 04 Nisht nor simkhe ... mp3 | Real Media new badkhones recalling Lodz and other wartime ghettos (Alpert) 05 Veynendiks ... mp3 | Real Media a musical paean to the pain of the world (Bjorling) 06 Vayl ikh bin a yidele ... mp3 | Real Media I sing this song because I am a Jew...(Herszkowicz/BOW) 07 S'iz kaydankes, kaytn ... mp3 | Real Media everyone grabs what they can (Herszkowicz/BOW) 08 Rumkovski Khayim ... mp3 | Real Media sung by Michael Alpert (Herszkowicz/BOW) 09 Yikhes ... mp3 | Real Media ribald remarks on family background (trad/BOW) 10 Makh tsi di eygelekh ... mp3 | Real Media heartbreaking lullaby tango (Beygelman/Shpigl/BOW) 11 Es geyt a yeke ... mp3 | Real Media a bitter satire of the German Jews in Lodz (Herszkowicz/BOW) 12 Ver klapt do? ... mp3 | Real Media seduction and persuasion (trad/BOW) 13 Geto, getunya ... mp3 | Real Media a love song to the ghetto (Herszkowicz/BOW) 14 Kuyavyak ... mp3 | Real Media accordion solo (trad/Bern) 15 Nor zorgt nit, yidn/Amerike hot erklert ... mp3 | Real Media hope for a free life in a Jewish homeland (Beygelman/BOW) 16 Berlin 1990 ... mp3 | Real Media a sweet diaspora song haunted by memory and longing (Alpert) 17 Lodz-coda ... mp3 | Real Media reflections after the storm (Bern) 18 Bobover Khupe-Marsh ... mp3 | Real Media in loving memory of those who survived, those who did not, and coming generations (Mandelbaum/BOW) ............. >> Liner Notes Bless the Fire Recorded live in Weimar, Germany, Bless the Fire includes some of the finest playing of BOW ever recorded. New compositions by Alan Bern, Michael Alpert, Kurt Bjorling and Stuart Brotman take New Jewish Music another step, in a beautifully lyrical and poetic direction. Fans of BOW's meditative side as well as our more exhuberant side will find their appetites satisfied by the 12 original tracks on Bless the Fire. Excerpts are available below for downloading! The Real Audio files are for 56K modem downloads, the mp3 files are for broadband (DSL, Cable, etc.) downloads. >> Listen to samples from "Bless the Fire," BOW's newly released CD: 01 The Ladder ... mp3 | Real Media 02 Gules, Gules ... mp3 | Real Media 03 Marmarosh ... mp3 | Real Media 04 Der mentsh trakht un lakht ... mp3 | Real Media 05 Mazltov Boris ... mp3 | Real Media 06 Hora Flora ... mp3 | Real Media 07 A shpay in yam ... mp3 | Real Media 08 Tsum tish ... mp3 | Real Media 09 Still Happy ... mp3 | Real Media 10 At Midnight ... mp3 | Real Media 11 Yankl Dudl ... mp3 | Real Media 12 Es iz shoyn shpeyt ... mp3 | Real Media In North America, Bless the Fire is exclusively available online at: CDBaby.com In Europe, order Bless the Fire online at: amazon.de or JPC Musik ............. Blood Oranges Following in the footsteps of "Klezmer Music" (1990) and "Beyond The Pale" (1993), "Blood Oranges" (1997) goes even further in the direction of creating New Jewish Music. Beginning with a musical prologue, "Wailing World," which slowly fades in from the distance to bring the listener into the here-and-now musical landscape of "Yiddishland" ("from San Francisco to Brest-Litovsk"), the CD is a journey to a partly-real, partly imaginary world and the places and characters in it. Its musical "flow" reproduces that of a Brave Old World live concert, but the CD breaks from a "purist" acoustic music recording approach and openly embraces the effects of the recording studio. Musically, there are moments reminiscent of jazz, others of minimalist music, others of Kurt Weill. Is it still "klezmer" music? Noted Internet Klezmer Critic Ari Davidow wrote of this program in concert: "the band plays a klezmer music that is so entirely grounded in the present, so intensely evolved from the music as it was, and yet so clearly, obviously, entirely klezmer that one could not even separate out many of the influences." (Ari Davidow's Klezmer Shack, Reviews) In North America, order Blood Oranges online at: Red House Records or amazon.com In Europe, order Blood Oranges online at: amazon.de or JPC Music ............. Beyond the Pale Berlin in May ... fragrant linden trees in bloom, sidewalk cafes overflowing on long evenings. The walls are down - outwardly, at least - and the world streams into this city like floodwater... Where are the modernist poets of Vilna and New York, the avant-garde artists of Moscow and Vitebsk, the proletarian intelligentsia of Warsaw? We are the Native Americans of Europe... Such a happy people... Was wollen Sie hier in Deutschland? What do you want here in Germany? So play me a sweet Diaspora song, with a longing that's pure... (Michael Alpert, BOW) That text, excerpted from Brave Old World's 1993 groundbreaking CD "Beyond The Pale," pointedly confronted the irony of the presence and absence of Jewish culture in contemporary Germany, including the reception of Klezmer music itself. "Beyond The Pale" was awarded the Preis der deutschen Schallplatten Kritik (German Record's Prize), and features the original songs Berlin Overture/Berlin 1990, which place a bittersweet frame around the rest of the titles, an accordion solo (Big Train), a poignant tsimbl waltz (Waltz Roman a Clef), BOW's popular "hit" song (Basarabye), as well as introducing Kurt Bjorling on clarinets and his original works such as Rufn Di Kinder Aheym and A Tish-Nign. Berlin Overture was on the German Bestenliste ("Best of..." list) for six months, fittingly ironic for a song about the irony of playing Jewish music in Germany. Sound files of several titles as well as a review of the recording are available at Ari Davidow's Klezmer Shack. In North America, order Beyond the Pale online at: Red House Records or amazon.com and look for it soon on CDBaby! In Europe, order Beyond the Pale online at: amazon.de or JPC Music ............. Klezmer Music Then: The world is in an uproar. Millions travel from land to land, looking for a home. Old ways are obsolete, and new ways become old faster than ever before. Nationalism rises, promising self-determination while threatening global disaster. Technology runs amok - will it serve us or will we serve it? Mass movements and powerful governments struggle to control human destiny in an era of uncertainty. For some, it is the end of time, for others, only the beginning. To ride out the hurricane of change takes great courage, hope, tenacity and a sense of irony. Now: (See "Then"). That text introduced "Klezmer Music," the award-winning first CD from Brave Old World, published in 1990 and still relevant today. Highlights of the CD include Alpert's bitterly ironic song about the nuclear disaster in the one-time Khassidic shtetl, Chernobyl, historic recordings of the drummer/singer Ben Bazyler (who died in 1990), the tsimbl/accordion duet "Moskowitz meets Beckermann," as well as introducing the suite concept of interwoven instrumental and vocal pieces in "Keshenev." See the review and listen to sound samples at Ari Davidow's Klezmer Shack. In North America, order Klezmer Music online at: Rounder Records or amazon.com. In Europe, order Klezmer Music online at: Fenn Music or amazon.de or JPC Music. ............. Fiddler's House In the Fiddler's House & Live in the Fiddler's House. These two record-breaking best-sellers feature not only Itzhak Perlman and Brave Old World, but also the Klezmatics, the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and the Andy Statman Orchestra, with Alan Bern and Stu Brotman playing in Andy's Band. In North America, both CDs are available at: amazon.com In Europe, both CDs are available at: amazon.de ::