Jazz Articles about Frank London

Frank London / Lorin Sklamberg: Tsuker-zis

by Eyal Hareuveni
September 12, 2009

Trumpeter Frank London and vocalist/accordionist Lorin Sklamberg have always attempted to introduce a fresh perspective when redefining traditional Jewish music. As founders of the Grammy award-winning alt-klezmer band The Klezmatics, they adapt ancient and traditional holiday songs of the Jewish diaspora into a modern, surprising sphere.Tsuker-zis, (sugar-sweet), their third installment of Hasidic religious songs and melodies, nigunim--after Nigunim (Tzadik, 1998) and The Zmiros Project (Traditional Crossroads, 2001)--are all exemplary for their vision. They dress the beautiful and touching ...

Frank London: A Night in the Old Marketplace & Gachupin

by Joel Roberts
March 7, 2008

Frank London A Night in the Old Marketplace Soundbrush 2007 Gachupin Gachupin Self Released 2007

Nearly a decade in the making, A Night in the Old Marketplace is an ambitious project based on a 1907 play by Yiddish writer IL Peretz featuring a powerful score by klezmer virtuoso Frank London and ...

Frank London: The Jew with the Horn

by Eyal Hareuveni
November 13, 2007

Frank London is one of the most interesting and colorful figures in the current revival of Jewish music--mistakenly identified only as Klezmer music--of the last two decades. London seeks consciously and constantly to expand the terminology and vocabulary of Jewish music with groups including Hasidic New Wave, Shekinah Big Band and Klezmer Brass All-Stars. The Klezmatics won a 2006 best World Music Grammy Award for its versions of Woody Guthrie songs on Wonder Wheel (Jewish Music Group, 2006). “It was ...

Frank London: Frank London's A Night in the Old Marketplace

by C. Michael Bailey
June 13, 2007

"There's an angel who lies at the bottom of the well. Can you still hear her sighs from the bottom of the well? She fled from a man who she never could love. Now her bed's in the sand at the bottom of the well."

How can any red-blooded poetry lover resist such bleak lyrics? If this is not enough, these words are splashed against a decadent-rich Klezmer-Cabaret backdrop that sounds like Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht deep ...

Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars: Carnival Conspiracy: In the Marketplace All Is Subterfuge

by Elliott Simon
March 11, 2006

Trumpeter Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars jump-started New York City's globalFEST this past month. The two-day smorgasbord of sound, now in its third sold-out year at Joe's Pub, featured three concurrent stages of the best in world music. London's aggregation included a bevy of brass, clarinets, vocalists, Brazilian percussion ensemble Scott Kettner & Maracatú New York, and the furiously pumping rhythm section of drummer Aaron Alexander and tubaist extraordinaire Ron Caswell. Coupled with London's sweet horn and manic stage presence, ...

Frank London's Klezmer Brass All Stars: Brotherhood of Brass

by Elliott Simon
August 9, 2002

The mystical high priest of New Wave Avant-Klez jazz, Frank London, has released an album that defies phony political barriers and exposes solid musical commonalties among Gypsy, Jewish and Arabic music. ?Brotherhood of Brass?, the second release from Frank London?s Klezmer Brass All Stars, is a concept album that reaches across multiple millennia to present a view of musical cultural inter-relationships. For this purpose, London has enlisted the aid of two other brass bands, the Boban Markovic Orkestar (Serbia) and ...