The Sirba Octet today.
So if I had to make a bet on what the future of classical music is, my bet is that it will branch in two directions whose competition will be as ideologically fraught as Verdi vs. Wagner, Schoenberg vs. Stravinsky. On the one side, electronic music and its infinite frontier of possibility, on the other side, the plethora of folk music recordings greater and greater fidelity to the organic roots of music's long history and pre-history, but with renewed classical sophistication as a framework to give still greater flights of instrumental virtuosity and harmonic and timbral invention.
The Sirba Octet is a Klezmer group, but with virtuosity and compositional rigor compounded so stunningly that it can't really be considered an organic sort of Klezmer. It is archetypal of that very French stylistic way of taking the best genres considered anachronistic elsewhere and giving it the home of extended life, just as they have with jazz and Jerry Lewis.
To be sure, this is Klezmer, and just about all of it is old Klezmer tunes, but with stunning instrumental virtuosity beyond anything you'll hear from Abe Elenkrig and Dave Tarras.
It's not authentic Klezmer anymore than Newgrass is authentic bluegrass, but it is the next step, and relates Klezmer to context of music history's long river. The result is a once-in-a-year musical revelation.
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