Ty Citerman - Bop Kabbalah+Voices: When You Speak of Times to Come (Ven Du Redst Fun Naye Tsaytn) [CD]

Ty Citerman’s gorgeous new concept album features a lush trio of guitar, electronics and the imaginatively versatile vocalists Sara Serpa and Judith Berkson. Staunch leftist texts from the 150 year-old Yiddish labor movement are given an unprecedented modern musical treatment here: delicate, plaintive, hypnotic and passionate. For his first album as bandleader in six years, Citerman generously offers a nine-part song cycle followed by the ambitious 23-minute “Future Generations (Doyrus Fun Der Tsukunft).” Beside his nimble and idiosyncratic guitar work, Berkson and Serpa’s voices dance, soar and sometimes erupt. Meticulously recorded, mixed and mastered by Grammy Award-winning engineer Damon Whittemore, “Bop Kabbalah+Voices…” looks to both the past for inspiration and the future (“When You Speak of Times to Come…”) for creative visioning - may this music inspire listeners to imagine and join the organized struggle for a more just, humane world. A portion of all profits will help support the