Ty Citerman, Sara Serpa and Judith Berkson Breathe New Life Into Old Jewish Protest Songs

Guitarist Ty Citerman has been using haunting old Jewish themes as a springboard for many different styles, from jagged art-rock to more improvisational situations, for the better part of a quarter century. The latest installment in his Bop Kabbalah+Voices project is The Yiddish Song Cycle Live with singers Sara Serpa and Judith Berkson, recorded live in the studio for a June 2021 webcast and streaming at Bandcamp. As challenging as much of this is, it’s yet another reminder why more arists should make live records. Gordon Grdina‘s harder-edged, most Balkan-tinged electric guitar work is a good point of comparison.

The two women set the stage with the first number, trading lines of an English translation of a prayer by 19th century Russian protest songwriter Avrom Reyzen. From there they work back and forth, building otherworldly, Eastern European close harmonies over Citerman’s spare, lingering phrases.

“Demand bread!” Berkson orders before Citerman enters gingerly and the two singers blend voices in the second song, Geyt Brider Geyt! (Go Brothers, Go!), coalescing into a stern, somber march before expanding with bubbly, staccato vocalese over Citerman’s similarly incisive, sparse, clean-toned riffage. The simmering crescendo afterward is a rewarding payoff.

“Down with you, you executioner, get off the throne, no one believes in you anymore,” Berkson insists in Mit Eyn Hant Hostu Undz Gegebn Di Konstitutsieh (With One Hand You Gave Us the Constitution). Words as appropriate now as they were against the Russian Tsar in 1905! Citerman slowly shifts from troubled ambience to enigmatic, looping phrases behind his bandmates’ creepy chants, to a similarly smoldering coda.

“Stop clinking your chains and let it be a little quiet,” Serpa suggests to introduce Ver Tut Stroyen Movern, Palatsn? (Who Builds Walls, Palaces?) This time the vocals are more tightly interwoven and the guitar is as minimalist as it gets here, underscoring the contrast between Berkson’s assertive delivery and Serpa’s more silken restraint.

“Freedom is moving forward,” Serpa intones with a precise mystery in the fragmented intro to the final number, Es Rirt Zikh, a setting of a 1886 poem by Morris Winchevsky, Citerman scrambling around behind the singers. Berkson takes a stately, sober approach to the original Yiddish lyrics as Serpa sings austere, uneasy harmonies overhead and Citerman loops a skeletal, catchy riff. The vocalists diverge with an increasing wariness as Citerman clusters and sheds a few starry sparks. The little joke at the end is too good to give away.

Neither Citerman nor Berkson have New York shows coming up, but Serpa is leading an intriguing quartet with Ingrid Laubrock on sax, Angelica Sanchez on piano and Erik Friedlander on cello at Seeds at the southern edge of Ft. Greene on April 6 at 8 PM. The space is actually the intimate front porch of a private home; cover is $10.

An Incisive New Album and a Deep Brooklyn Show by Jazz Violinist Sara Caswell

As one of the elite violinists in jazz, Sara Caswell had no shortage of gigs until the 2020 lockdown. The good news is that she’s reemerged with a bracingly kinetic new album of her own, The Way to You, streaming at Spotify. Her next gig, on April 6 at 8 PM at the Owl, is an auspicious duo performance with similarly lyrical pianist Julian Shore.

Caswell opens the record with Nadje Noordhuis’ South Shore, a wistful, soaring violin melody over a tightly dancing rhythm, bassist Ike Sturm bubbling over drummer Jared Schonig’s flickers, guitarist Jesse Lewis supplying a lingering backdrop with his volume knob in tandem with vibraphonist Chris Dingman. The guitar/violin duel midway through is especially tasty, setting up a pointillistic Dingman solo and a resolute cirrus-sky solo from the bandleader on the way out.

Caswell redeems a cliched indie guitar riff that’s been recycled a million times in track two, Stillness,  choosing her spots to pierce the opacity with her silken trills and stark melodic phrasing. Sturm holds the center as a loopy, uneasy sonic pool develops, then Schonig leads the group back to clarity.

Caswell and Lewis reinvent Egberto Gismonti’s 7 Anéis with a stunningly successful acoustic Romany jazz flair, then she pulls the group further out with a triumphant, incisive solo. The album’s title track is a steady, guarded theme, Caswell’s floating lines over Lewis’ spare resonance. Schonig’s cymbal mist and then Lewis’ graceful variations on a sparkly downward riff. Caswell reaches to her most crystalline and then misty textures to wind it out.

The group remake Kenny Barron’s Voyage as a light-footed, bracing, syncopated swing tune, Lewis and Dingman sparring their way up to a smoldering guitar solo. Warren’s Way, built around Caswell’s stark, bittersweet lines is up next, Sturm and Lewis dipping to a muted pulse before Caswell bursts through the clouds.

She and Lewis build increasingly smoldering, altered blues over a loose-limbed stride in Last Call, the album’s edgiest number. Violin and vibes match precise riffage over a long drive to exit velocity in Spinning. Caswell switches to the Norwegian hardanger d’amore fiddle – with a woodier, viola-like tone – to reinvent Jobim’s O Que Tinha de Ser and close the album on an achingly searching note.

An Unusual, Eclectic Songwriter Triplebill on the Lower East on April 2

Songwriters in the round usually suck. That’s because, almost inevitably, there’s a weak link: a show-swap quid pro quo, an attempt by an underappreciated tunesmith to kiss up to a mediocrity with a larger but equally mediocre fan base, that sort of thing. But there’s a rare first-class song-swap show coming up on April 2 at 7 PM at the downstairs room at the Rockwood, where fantastic story-songwriter Lara Ewen, the enigmatically tuneful Shira Goldberg and Nashville honkytonk/southern rock songstress Mercy Bell share the stage. Cover is $10.

Ewen earned a place on the abbreviated best-shows-of-2020 list here and for several years booked the American Folk Art Museum when they had regular weekly music. Back home, Bell fronts an excellent, purist band. But Goldberg is the most intriguing of the bunch. Back in 2011 she put out a jazz-tinged bedroom pop record, then eight years later released an excellent ep, Caught Up in a Dream, which is streaming at Bandcamp.

The centerpiece is the title track, a subtly soul-infused, gorgeously bittersweet, distantly haunting janglerock masterpiece. But the rest of the songs are strong as well. The opening number, Keeping It Together is a stark, imagistic acoustic narrative. “The lines have gone dark, giving up the core,,,you can count me out,” Goldberg relates. “You can drive without the lights if you take it slow.”

She adds lingering layers of tremolo guitar in It’s a Beautiful Night, an optimistic oldschool soul-tinged ballad. She returns to a catchy blend of vintage soul and New Pornographers-style backbeat rock spiced with wry Dr. Dre synth in the last track, Who Am I to Say. Let’s hope we hear more from this individualistic voice.

The Underwater Bosses Make a Big Splash With Their Latest Record

The mostly-monthly series of surf rock shows at Otto’s have been going on practically since the venue opened in the old Barmacy space at 14th St. just west of Ave. B more than two decades ago. Auspiciously, the dumpy little quasi-tiki bar was one of the first places to reopen without restrictions after the 2020 lockdown, which is surprising considering their draconian door policy (you’ll be carded even if you’re eighty and on a walker, so bring your passport which the ID scanner can’t read and then share with the CCP).

Next month’s show, on April 1 is a good one and starts at 8 with the Underwater Bosses, followed at around 9:30 by Tsunami of Sound and then Blue Wave Theory, The segues are good: each band is a little heavier than your typical surf act, and they all play mostly originals. The Underwater Bosses are the loudest but most eclectic of the bunch. Tsunami of Sound are the most trad. Blue Wave Theory frequently work a more enveloping Ventures spacerock side and have a ton of free downloads available.

The Underwater Bosses’ latest album The Night Divides the Ride is streaming at Bandcamp. They open with the title track, which comes across as a mashup of the Raybeats and Link Wray (no relation, actually…). Track two, Juan of the Waves is a thundering blend of Dick Dale tremolo pick-melting and a big, brassy spaghetti western theme complete with forlorn trumpet.

Guitarist Chris Stewart breaks out his roller-rink organ for The Volcano Boys, a bossa-tinged tune that wouldn’t be out of place in the Laike & the Cosmonauts catalog. Greg Bresett’s gritty bass intro to Dirk Dagger is a red herring: it’s a blazing, reverb-soaked spy tune in 5/4 time.,

If Link Wray, Dick Dale and Buck Owens had a relative in common, it would be Beach Moles. There’s all kinds of cool bass-and-guitar interplay in Rumble in Belmont and darkly straightforward blues riffage in The Black Demon of Cortez.

The web of textures, from icepick reverb to raw roar in Ride Baby is especially tasty. The amps go up even further in Sea Wolf, the album’s most bludgeoning, riff-driven number, which makes a good segue with the blasts of chords in Aqualizer.

The rhythmically trickiest, most cinematic number here is Salmon’s Lot, drummer Bob Breen leading the band up out of a spiderwalk to a big organ-fueled interlude, They bring the record full circle with The Return of the Hand, the closest thing to the Raybeats and punk rock here. This Rochester, New York-based trio deserves to be way better known.

A Rare Loud Rock Show Coming Up at the Lincoln Center Atrium

Has a heavy psychedelic rock band ever played Lincoln Center? Believe it or not, a few punk acts have played there over the years. There was a rare concert by a reconfigured version of legendary 70s Detroit band Death there in 2010, Six years later, Hoba Hoba Spirit – the Moroccan Clash – raised the roof at the atrium space on Broadway south of 63rd St. That’s where heavy spacerock trio King Buffalo are playing on March 30 at 7:30 PM. It’s a free show; you might want to get there early.

Their new album Regenerator is streaming at Bandcamp. Whether motoring along at a fast autobahn clip or with a slow, heavier sway, they like hanging on a single chord to build hypnotic ambience that can go on for minutes on end. They open the record with the title epic, a galloping mashup of shiny 80s chorus-box spacerock, krautrock and maybe Budos Band. You don’t realize it’s a one-chord jam until frontman/guitarist Sean McVay kicks off his wah pedal and brings in the fuzz.

Bassist Dan Reynolds and drummer Scott Donaldson fuel a hypnotic, circling forward drive in the second track, Mercury, a heavier take on mid-80s Talking Heads until McVay blasts in with the distortion. The trio go back to stomping spacerock with track three, Hours, a throwback to 90s Brian Jonestown Massacre until a wry portamento synth-and-bass interlude midway through.

They nick a famous Beatles theme for the drony, raga-like intro to Mammoth, a slow, swaying, echoey ba-bump groove that they suddenly take halfspeed to a gritty roar and a big majestic outro. They follow a slow, bouncy, Muse-ish sway for Avalon – a starry, drifting, unexpectedly crescendoing original, not the Roxy Music classic.

They wind up the record with Firmament, slowly rising from a circling, chiming loop to layers of distortion, wah and Donaldson’s oscillating, insectile synth.

A Colorful, Expressive, Minutely Jeweled New Album From Pianist Kariné Poghosyan

Pianist Kariné Poghosyan has received plenty of ink on this page, both for her spectacular technical prowess as well as her sensitivity to content. Her latest album, simply titled Folk Themes and streaming at youtube, is a characteristically eclectic and insightful playlist.

She opens with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s six-part Valse Suite. It’s almost comical to look back to 2019, a time when the African-British composer’s incredibly forward-looking, individualistic work had been largely consigned to the organ demimonde. Let’s hope future generations associate him with the Romantic tradition – Dvorak is a good comparison – rather than the odious CRT fad which ironically may be the reason behind his well-deserved if unlikely resurrection.

Poghosyan begins with a spacious and playful approach to the opening A minor movement  with her usual stunning, crystalline articulacy and a wide dynamic range. Did a later composer steal the Andante in Ab for the jazz ballad These Foolish Things? From Poghosyan’s blend of wistfulness and sheer force, that seems possible.

There’s Rachmaninovian gravitas and surprise in the third quasi-waltz in G minor, while the fourth in D minor gets a rewardingly pouncing interpretation befitting its occasional Near Eastern allusions and blend of sternness and vivacity. No. 5 in Eb is more reflective and Chopinesque; the final piece, in C minor gets restrained savagery in the chordal chromatics and an even greater, fond restraint in the pensive moments. It’s about time these little gems made their way back into the canon: we’re lucky we have Poghosyan reveling in their detail.

Next on the bill are four Grieg Lyric Pieces. To the Spring follows a matter-of-factly triumphant tangent, while March of the Gnomes reveals how much unabashed fun the creepy little guys can have, at least from Poghosyan’s perspective. She mines The Minuet “Vanished Days” for equal parts drama and cheery reflection, then gives the Wedding Day at Troldhaugen a welcome, fleet-footed, verdant atmosphere: these circumstances are anything but pompous.

Poghosyan has always advocated for composers from her Armenian heritage, and includes a couple of alternately stark and lively, chromatically bristling miniatures from Komitas Vardapet’s Six Dances for Piano. She saves the fireworks for last with four big crowd-pleasers by Liszt. The counterintuitive goofiness and carefree, dancing flourishes in the Hungarian Rhapsody No.12 are a revelation but no big surprise considering Poghosyan’s meticulous, line-by-line interpretive skill.

There’s also a lingering delight in her leaps and bounds through Rhapsody No.6: the descending cascades about four minutes in are sublime. And she finds the inner swing in a brisk, animatedly conversational take of Rhapsody No.7. She closes the record with the Rhapsodie Espagnole, ranging between a wide-eyed soberness and fiery, clustered phrasing. It’s been a fun ride keeping up with Poghosyan and her penchant for inhabiting everything she sinks her fast fingers into.

A Rare, Harrowing Gem by One of New York’s Most Riveting Voices

Erica Smith was still in her twenties when she recorded a handful of quietly shattering acoustic songs in 2003. They were meant as demos. Her electric band would later air those songs out, memorably, at venues across New York and beyond, but recordings of them haven’t seen the light of day until recently. Her ep, which she calls The Dead and the Saints, is up at Bandcamp as a free download. It’s an important piece of New York music history and you should own it.

Smith’s first album was a stark, saturnine acoustic folk record. She pulled a band together for her second record, Friend or Foe, a showcase for her ability to reach from simmering oldschool soul, to stark traditional songs and impassioned ballads.

That versatility, and her similarly eclectic songwriting, came to the forefront with her third release, Snowblind, a harrowing chronicle of tragedy, loss and eventual resurgence. More recently she’s flexed her chops as a jazz stylist.

But this riveting little record reminds how strong she already was, two decades ago. “It starts with the sound of the siren,” she sings in Jesus’s Clown, a crucifixion parable and a co-write with the late Sean Dolan that ranks with that famous Phil Ochs song. “There were more than twelve of us around, and those who stayed got their names written down,” she reminds: “I was there and I know what I saw.”

See You in the Morning might be Smith’s most haunting song, a sober waltz with childhood memories of her mother, whom she lost as a gradeschooler. The vocals will rip your face off.

As they will on All the King’s Horses, another Dolan co-write. This version is a stripped-down version of the metaphorically-loaded pilgrim’s narrative which pretty much capsulizes the ugly history of the world in a few cinematic minutes. It’s been called one of the best songs ever written:

By now He would have died six more times, been resurrected and forgiven
We watched in hiding as they rolled away the stone
Praised heaven and all that’s forbidden

It’s also missing the eventual crushing final verse. The final cut on the ep is a rare waltz version of Old Pine Box, a haunted, imagistic tale that the band played as a brisk psychedelic janglerock tune.

Smith is still active as a performer; the last time this blog was in the house was a similarly magical acoustic show upstairs at 2A in the spring of 2018.

20-String Koto Sorceress Yumi Kurosawa Brings Her Flickering Magic to Joe’s Pub

Yumi Kurosawa got her start as a national champion koto player in her native Japan. But she hardly limits herself to traditional Japanese sounds. On her latest album Metamorphosis – which isn’t online yet – she expands her signature style, cross-pollinating with other traditions from around the globe. The result is individualistic to the nth degree and often unselfconsciously gorgeous: this is one of the most beautiful albums of 2023 so far. She’s playing the album release show on March 30 at 7 PM at Joe’s Pub; cover is $25/$15 stud.

Here’s what it sounds like. She and the band launch into a brisk, verdant sway in the opening track, Oneday Monday, violinist Naho Parrini sailing over Kurosawa’s spiky, intricate phrasing, which sometimes resembles a harp, other times a banjo. Her flashy glissandos and cascades make a contrast with the undulating groove from Eric Phinney’s tabla. There’s a tantalizingly brief violin-koto duel before they wind it up.

She and her trio follow a suspensefully cantering pace in track two, aptly titled Journey, with more of a traditional pentatonic folk atmosphere spiced with stark violin and delicately dancing tabla, down to an elegant Britfolk-tinged waltz. By contrast, Dawn is a slow, stately processional in 6/8 time, with wistful violin over Kurosawa’s intricately churning lines. As it winds out, she moves to a more incisive rhythm while Parrini reaches to an angst-fueled peak.

The album’s big epic is Restless Daydream: first Kurosawa and Parrini follow a similar stark/resonant dynamic, then the boomy percussion kicks in, violin and and koto building a kaleidoscopic interweave. Guest alto saxophonist Zac Zinger and then Parrini add thoughtful solos: the way she blasts out of a misterioso Kurosawa break as the group reach liftoff will give you goosebumps.

The terrain changes just as vividly in New Land Found, the group shifting from a catchy, anthemic intro to a rising and falling, bracingly tense theme and then a graceful waltz. Likewise, they move from an insistent, martial pulse to more airy textures in Zealla.

Mystical, lingering passages interchange with adrenalizing climbs and flurries throughout the next track, Mandala. While Inner Space is the only solo koto piece here, it’s arguably the high point of the album: Kurosawa is a one-woman orchestra with her thickets of circling, wavelike phrases underpinning an incisive melody that she drives to a slashing crescendo, and then gracefully downward. The band wind their way from a wistful mashup of Japanese folk and a rock ballad to a boisterously shuffling theme bookending a boomy percussion solo in the album’s final cut, Departure.

Transcendent Soul Songs From Thana Alexa, Nicole Zuraitis and Julia Adamy

When the 2020 lockdown was unleashed on New York, singers Thana Alexa and Nicole Zuraitis and bassist Julia Adamy didn’t let getting locked out of their professions stop them from making a soul album. Together, the three women call themselves Sonica: their debut release, streaming at Outside in Music, is a simmering and frequently powerful collaboration. With terse bass, colorful drums and immersive layers of electronic keys, the trio transcend what was obviously a harrowing year.

The opening number, Doyenne, is a catchy, minimalist trip-hop song with ethereally contrapuntal vocals and empowerment-themed samples from iconic feminist figures. Adamy’s catchy funk bassline propels track two, Where Ya Gonna Go, the two-woman frontline delivering an understatedly snarky soul anthem that speaks truth to power about one particularly odious lockdown divide-and-conquer scheme, with playful, extrovert drumming from Adamy’s husband Ross Pederson,

The best song on the album is Come a Long Way, Zuraitis’ spare, misty take on 90s Sade sonics, a poignant message from mother to daughter during soul-crushing lockdown isolation: “Please don’t give up the fight!” That’s her husband Dan Pugach behind the drumkit.

Adamy’s spare, understatedly gorgeous cover of Stevie Wonder’s Love’s In Need of Love Today reflects hope for transcending a different kind of divide-and-conquer during the Trump years. Change It, with Thana Alexa’s husband Antonio Sanchez on drums, is the most majestic track here, with lush, fiery multitracked vocals. They close the record by reinventing Danny Boy as an innovatively harmonized choral piece.

And shooting for hypnotically drifting rainy-day pop in a cover penned by a notoriously whiny indie rock beardo is a questionable move, but it sure beats the original. Zuraitis is at Smalls on March 29 at 7:30 with Pugach’s jazz nonet. And Thana Alexa is with Sanchez’s band at the Blue Note at 8 on April 3.

Mark Pacoe Commands the Power of the Organ at St. Patrick’s Cathedral

Among the many reasons for guarded optimism that this city is slowly healing from the traumas inflicted over the past three years is the sudden resurgence of concert traditions that were put on ice in March of 2020. One that was badly missed was the semi-regular series of organ and choral concerts in the magnificent, reverb-heavy sonics at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Mark Pacoe, who was one of the few and the brave to still be playing for audiences as late as the winter of 2020, delivered an eclectically welcome program there on the mighty Kilgen organ on Sunday afternoon

He opened with the Prelude from 20th century composer Paul Creston’s Suite for Organ, a steady, bright, unabashedly Romantic processional with a catchy, anthemic pedal melody amid a torrential swirl, to a matter-of-fact all-stops-out conclusion.

Next on the bill was a 2021 piece, Jason Roberts‘ Prelude & Fugue on the iconic Umm Kulthumm anthem Eta Omri, Pacoe quickly rising from an enigmatic introduction to a pouncing chase sequence punctuated by disquieting lulls. It’s not particularly Middle Eastern-tinged, but it’s an increasingly harried showstopper, quite possibly a reflection on our times.

Ian Farrington‘s variations on Amazing Grace, from 2017, were somewhat quieter but similarly animated, with frequent, jaunty blues riffage. Pacoe closed on a redemptively familiar note with the final two movements from Jean Langlais’ Suite Française. Pacoe played the Voix Céleste with a restless, relentless airiness, enhanced by a pace that seemed on the brisk side. That continued in the finale as he punched in with a redemptive, precise, gusty power.

The next free organ concert at St. Pat’s is on April 16 at 3:15 PM (these shows start right on time) with Ken Corneille playing his own songs plus works by 18th century French composer Médéric Corneille, and contemporary American composer and improviser McNeil Robinson