Alternative Worlds Jewish cabaret music - surprises GERALD FENECH '... those who decide to take the plunge will be rewarded with riches aplenty.'

The history of sound film traces its beginnings to the long history of Jewish cabaret. Indeed, in history's first synchronized sound film, The Jazz Singer of 1927, the main character portrays the struggle between Jewish tradition and the dreams of stardom awaiting him in New York's jazz clubs and vaudeville stages, a struggle epitomizing the real-life transition for European Jews at the beginning of the twentieth century — migration from the rural to the urban condition, immigration from the Old World to the New, from religious orthodoxy to modern secularism, from diaspora to cosmopolitanism. As the old order of European empire collapsed in the wake of World War I, the Jewish musical tradition gathered new metaphors: those of modernity and modernism, ripe for the stories that would shift from the cabaret stage to the celluloid of sound film.

The New Budapest Orpheum Society together with the Cedille label have embarked on a project to trace the origins, development and European Jewish cabaret music through extensive historical research and compelling performances in concert and on a series of lauded albums...

ERICH WOLFGANG KORNGOLD

VIKTOR ULLMANN

CHICAGO

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CEDILLE RECORDS