KLEZMER REAWAKENED: Old Yiddish melodies ring out in wonderful, lively new arrangements of wedding and festival music from Eastern Europe that was thought to be lost and has not been heard or played for over 100 years – until today!
Susi Evans and Szilvia Csaranko invite their audience on a fascinating journey into a world of almost forgotten Klezmer music. A treasure trove of hand-written manuscripts collected between 1912-1914 during ethnographic field research trips in Ukraine, containing almost 1400 melodies, were long-preserved in the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine and recently became available to the international klezmer community.
The tunes, sometimes overflowing with joy, sometimes deeply moving and melancholic, are carefully arranged and excellently performed by two extraordinary musicians with a deep understanding of this style.
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If you’ve ever seen klezmer-Balkan band, She’Koyokh, or the London Klezmer Quartet then you’ll agree that Susi Evans is “one of the best klezmer clarinettists of our day” (Simon Broughton, Songlines Magazine). Her duo partner is Hungarian-born, Hannover-based accordionist, Szilvia Csaranko who is one of only a handful of accordionists worldwide specialising in traditional Yiddish music.
Both are classically trained musicians; Evans graduated from London’s Royal Academy of Music and Csaranko trained as a classical pianist. Based in Hannover and London, they met and formed a duo in 2019. Their first album, Klezmer from the New World was described by Songlines as “a brilliant duo recording with superb instrumental playing”. They are releasing their second album in 2023.
