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L
I T T L E P
R I N C E S S
"Little
Princess sounds vaguely familiar and yet like nothing else,
exuding joy and euphoric creativity. No home should be
without a copy (seriously)."
- East Bay Express
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REVIEWS
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Can
Non-Jews play Klezmer?
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Jazz Police
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East
Bay Express
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Review from Trad Magazine, France
Si cet album met à l’honneur les compositions du
célèbre clarinettiste Naftule Brandwein
(1889-1963) icône de la musique juive, c’est
certainement aussi la formidable prouesse de Tim Sparks que
d’avoir réussi avec une guitare, une contrebasse
(Greg Cohen) et des percussions (Cyro Baptista) à
recréer les subtiles ambiances de la musique klezmzer
sans la clarinette. Entre Pierre Bensusan et Stephan
Grossman, la guitare acoustique façon jazzy se
développe en arabesques raffinées au sustain
remarqué. Le formidable guitariste délaisse
provisoirement le fingerpicking pour s’adonner à
une musique métissée qui glisse, klezmer
oblige, en ambiances grecque, turque, gitane,
brésilienne ou hispanisante aux contre-chants de
percussions hypnotiques et d’une basse
omniprésente, ample et vindicative. Trio acoustique
avant tout qui défriche sur un terrain novateur, la
formule tourne au brio quand chacun des musiciens
s’égarent et se retrouvent magistralement au
détour d’une double-croche ou d’un silence
évocateur qui devient soupir. Mélodies qui
ravivent les émois et les nostalgies nulles autres
pareilles de la musique juive qui s’est
encanaillée dans les ghettos new-yorkais du Nouveau
Monde.
Alain Hermanstadt
Guitarist extraordinaire Tim Spark fuses a vibrant spin on
traditional klezmer music set down by the once heralded
“King of the klezmer clarinet” Naftule Brandwein,
who performed in an Uncle Sam costume, garbed in electric
lights, largely within the Lower East Side area of Manhattan
back in the early 1900s. Interestingly enough, Sparks muses
that Brandwein might have been the original downtown artist,
which is a novel proposition due to the City’s
‘80s and onward, radical concoctions of jazz, Jewish
music, rock and other genres.
Sparks and the rhythm section design a seamless blend of
jazz, klezmer and even bossa nova (“The Rebbe’s
Hasid”). The guitarist also injects Spanish lines into
the grand mix via his fluent phrasings. It’s an airy
endeavor, as the rhythm section maintains a solid but limber
pulse, enabling Sparks to improvise and invent over the
top.
On “Nifty’s Freylekh,” percussionist Cyro
Baptista uses small woodblock type implements to instill a
buoyant Latin groove, abetted by Sparks’ breezy
developments and brisk single note runs. Yet it’s
partly about the musicians’ conveyance of nuance,
complemented by ferocious chops that at times, can be
somewhat understated due to the all-acoustic format.
With keenly enacted dynamics, Sparks also offsets the
program by morphing blues-rock riffs into the program,
evidenced on “Lebenzol Palestina.” The guitarist
also takes a few solo spots where he dapples the klezmer
element with classical music stylizations. It’s a
lovely album, indeed. Sparks modernist approach to the old
wine historical mindset yields bountiful rewards.
- JazzReview
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