Tag Archives: reviews

Just Add Shmaltz reviewed in The Listener

In the Listener (26 September – 2 October 2009, page 43) Ian Dando gives a great review of  the Reb’s latest CD Just Add Shmaltz:

This Wellington octet can let their hair down and swing Jewish wedding music with energetic solos just where it matters on clarinet, violin and trumpet, with spontaneous lead singing to match.  Clarinet solos are wildly creative in their Russian-flavoured Ochi Chorniye. There are some crackers when they leave traditional klezmer and write their own, especially the opening Kumt Kumt Chaverim, with its catchy refrains gyrating tonally between E minor and B flat major. The Rebs offer genuine in-style klezmer sonority, played with bubbling festivity.