Nedudim, Fifth House Ensemble, Baladino

Nedudim (Cedille CDR 90000 164) is what you get when the Fifth House Ensemble, Baladino and composer Dan Visconti put their collective creative energies to work. The three together give us a beautiful fusion of Middle Eastern, European and American folk traditions--with direct channelings of Israeli, Iranian, Spanish, and Indian folkways into a contemporary amalgam both extraordinarily diverse and effective.

My expressive self has been a happy recipient of this music for several weeks now. Each number shows off the sizable amassed forces, say for example vocals, violin, cello, double bass, flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, clarinet, oud, percussion, nay and shofar for "Si Veriash a la Rana."

Each number reflects the varied backgrounds of all concerned with traditional songs arranged deftly or new compositions reflecting and combining the collective heritage of all.

It takes a bit of adjustment and a release of your everyday expectations. Once that happens you will revel in a sophisticated and musically keen world amalgam that is a joy to hear.

Heartily and happily recommended!

Pablo Ziegler & Metropole Orkest, Amsterdam Meets New Tango

Where we can go musically these days is...anywhere. And when we do and it goes well, we all gain a great deal in the process. That's how I feel about Pablo Ziegler & Metropole Orkest's Amsterdam Meets New Tango (Zoho 201307).

Now as we all know the tango is first and foremost a dance originating if I am not mistaken in Argentina and spreading throughout the world in a big way last century. Of course it is also a musical form, with a pronounced rhythmic feel and certain melodic-tonal aspects. The history of this music is so rich and evolved that my knowledge of it spanning the advent of recorded sound is growing month-by-month, thanks in great part to what I can experience of the very early recordings on the internet and its continued vibrancy. It is one of the musical frontiers for me right now. So this innovative musical treatment of the form comes at quite the right time, personally speaking.

But more than that Amsterdam Meets New Tango is one of those landmark new things that comes at you and you recognize it straight off as such. Pablo Ziegler is a critical and important exponent of New Tango. And he shows us why on this album in a big way.

Ziegler plays a very sophisticated jazz-tango piano throughout. He is joined by other soloists to good effect--namely Quique Sinesi on nylon string guitar, Walter Castro on bandoneon, Quintino Cinalli on percussion and cajon. The fully-engaged, fully fleshed-out Metropole Orkest also provides good soloists that enter into the music as called for. The group for this project is a conjoining of a big band jazz outfit and an orchestra with strings and the like. Jules Buckley conducts, and an admirable job he does.

So those are the elements. The point of it all is to create an innovative compositional large group New Tango setting that has tango, jazz, orchestral, big band progressive elements, and to do it with real flair and innovative authenticity. All but one of the compositions are by Ziegler; one is by Sinesi.

What makes this work is the vibrant contemporary tango-plus-jazz plus-modern-compositional-elements and wow, does it work or what? It's a beautifully performed, beautifully written, beautifully improvised series of pieces. It takes on traditional tango motifs and the world of music today and combines them in ravishingly terrific ways.

I can't say enough about this one without rattling on and on, so I wont. It gets my highest praise!! Ziegler is tango genius!

Guy Klucevsek, Polka From the Fringe

Avant polka, new thing polka, dada polka, minimalist polka, punk-skronk polka, tongue-in-polka, metal polka, polka polka, who would put all that together better than Guy Klucevsek, accordion master and conceptual audio-artist (aka musician on the fringe)? And so we have this to ponder, dance and live to on a two-CD set, Polka From the Fringe (Starkland ST-218).

Guy, his accordion, his iconoclastic take on tradition and various musician-composers of like mind take the aural stage for 29 polkas inside-out, inside and outside. There are folks contributing from the cream of the new music and avant jazz scene, for example Elliott Sharp, Peter Garland, Bobby Previte, Mary Ellen Childs, Anthony Coleman, Tom Cora, Fred Frith, Phillip Johnston, just to name a few.

They run through a madcap array of Polka-induced creativity segments. Anything goes, with the constant of Guy's accordion centering it all. It's a funny-serious launching pad of all kinds of antics that will fascinate, satisfy, tickle and give contentual flesh to all manner of downtown and out-of-town polka rebirthing.

It's just the thing if you want something different and Guy is the one to pull it all together. Lawrence Welk never sounded like this!