From the first track which saunters along like a solitary man on a rain-slicked street, the New Klezmer Trio's Short for Something is an evocative masterpiece of musical alchemy. Clarinetist Ben Goldberg often floats above the more corporeal shimmers and rumblings of his collaborators Dan Seamans and Kenny Wollesen, but never steals the show or breaks away -- this is truly a group effort. Their music is fully embedded in modern creative avant-garde jazz, yet still manages to nod its head to the sounds of old Cracow, creating a cauldron of spiritual yearnings, sadness, chaos, visions, and grace. On "Sequential," the theme crashes and burns through chaotic nests of percussion, followed by "Obsessive" where the bassline carries the theme through a much calmer and more hypnotic percussive structure. But nowhere is the Trio's magic more evident than on the title track, where Wollesen's drumming spins a web around the heartbeat murmurs of Seamans' bass and Goldberg's reed nostalgia, creating a vision that flows in ribbons of images, each beautiful and a little terrible.
© Stacia Proefrock /TiVo