Alex Weiser presents: in a dark blue night

'in a dark blue night' is out March 29 on Cantaloupe Music
Preorder on Bandcamp: alexweiser.bandcamp.com/album...
Join us at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (NYC) on March 28
for an exclusive pre-launch concert: yivo.org/AlbumLaunch2024
Alex Weiser's latest recording, the follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-nominated 'and all the days were purple,' is a love letter to New York City. Featuring acclaimed singer Annie Rosen with a seven-piece chamber ensemble, the album comprises two song cycles that explore the city from complementary perspectives. The first cycle, 'in a dark blue night,' features five settings of Yiddish poetry written by newly arrived immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These poems reflect on the city at night - glowing, quiet, majestic.
It's followed by Coney Island Days, told through the recorded memories of Weiser's late grandmother. It features vivid, buoyant adventures about childhood in the bustling immigrant world of Coney Island in the 1930s and 40s - days at the beach, at the family's knish store, at the Russian baths and much more. "My grandmother grew up in Brooklyn spending summers in Coney Island, living with her family in a single room behind their knish store," Weiser says. "Hers was a multilingual world where she was taught English at school, but where her Yiddish-speaking parents could barely understand the language of their new land."
Together the two cycles celebrate the marvel and multiplicity of New York City, through a look at a little-explored chapter of its history.
Annie Rosen - mezzo-soprano
Lee Dionne - piano
Yasmina Spiegelberg - clarinet
Brigid Coleridge - violin
Lun Li - violin
Jordan Bak - viola
Julia Yang - cello
Sam Suggs - double bass
Produced by Alex Weiser
Recorded by Nick Lloyd at the Power Station, NYC
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