This project began with writing new arrangements to songs from the repertoire of the Ukrainian-American Yiddish singer Sidor Belarsky for a concert with singer Anthony Russell.

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The guiding concept in most of the arrangements in this collection is that textual time and musical time may not at all coincide. Very much like in a Schubert lied, the idea here was that the the protagonist would fluctuate between alternating psychological states, to underscore the vulnerability of a bygone world of the shtetl, one that only remains in our imagination.

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Mátti Kovler