Moishe’s Bagel’s musicianship has been described as ‘jazz inflected’, although their other influences are almost immediately audible. Klezmer, the secular music of Eastern Europe’s Jewish communities is clearly the principal one, but so are some clearly French-inspired accordion riffs, while some of their phrasing bears comparison with the compositional styles of a number of contemporary U.S. composers, or even (whisper it) those working within the Scottish and Irish tradition.
As impossible to classify as to ignore, Moishe’s Bagel have steadily built audiences through their four CD’s and numerous live appearances. With Greg Lawson (also of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and McFall’s Chamber) on violin, Phil Alexander (Salsa Celtica, his own adventurous tango trio and much additional composing) on piano, Pete Garnett on accordion, Mario Caribe (better known in his native Brazil than he deserves to be on these shores) on double bass and Guy Nicholson on percussion, Moishe’s Bagel opened with some stunning re-working of traditional Klezmer tunes before running almost seamlessly into ‘Uncle Roland’s Flying machine’, a tribute to an eccentric relative of Alexander’s that seemed a relaxed response to Steve Reich’s ‘Short Ride in a Fast Machine’, followed by the evocative ‘Tin Can’ and Harry Kanell’s ‘A Night in the Garden of Eden’, a Klezmer tune from the New York of the 1930’s.
This first half of the evening’s programme was in some ways a warm-up for the presentation of ‘Salt for Svanetia’, a Soviet-made film of roughly the same era as Kanell’s composition; produced as propaganda for Stalin’s first Five Year Plan, this restored film, near-documentary in parts, featured as part of the 2015 Hippodrome Festival of Silent Film (the Hippodrome at Bo’ness being Scotland’s oldest purpose-built cinema).
Director Mikhail Kalatozov’s film takes an uncompromising but cinematically innovative look at the northern Caucuses in he early 1930’s, at the point when the co-operatively based soviets of peasant farmers were about to be abolished through enforced collectivisation. Kalatozov thereby becomes a Russian equivalent of Robert Flaherty, recording a soon-to-vanish world of rare beauty and stark brutality. The score developed by Moishe’s Bagel (for it is made clear that this was a collaborative undertaking) fully reflects Kalatozov’s vision, although the narrative (such as it is) of the surviving print is sketchy to say the least. At points lyrical, at others driving to the point of atonality, the score becomes achievement in itself of which all involved ought to be justly proud. Played with both skill and élan, it was deservedly received with great audience appreciation.
Forming a considerable part of their fourth CD, this offers those unfamiliar with the work of these musicians an opportunity to appreciate their compositional and collective skills across an extensive musical work, available from http://moishesbagel.com/ and elsewhere.