Ain Sof & zmiros

[Abbi Wood <acw24...>]

Tayere khaveyrim,

This appears to be a good time for the release of book/CD sets! Last week
my copy of Frank London, Lorin Sklamberg & Rob Schwimmer's new 'Zmiros' CD
arrived. It comes coupled with a new Shabbes songbook/bencher, "Ain Sof",
made by NYU and published by KTAV. For those who were at KlezKanada, this
is the one Frank London and Jim Loeffler were talking about. The Ain Sof
project also has a highly cool website at www.ainsof.org where you can
listen to the CD and see a few pages.

As expected, the music is great. In addition to 8 Hebrew zmiros there are
also 2 Yiddish tracks, including a beautiful 'A gute vokh' found in the
YIVO archives. The Ain Sof book has a nice layout, including colour art
reproductions, excerpts of literature, an interview with Frank London and
various annotations, and extra zmiros as well as the usual bencher content
(the book and CD don't match up completely - it's a shame that the text
for 'Az nisht keyn emune' isn't in there). It's also a shame that Jim
Loeffler's essay on zmiros only comes with the separate version of the CD
(which I believe hasn't come out yet). Having said that though, it's
really a great deal, since the book and CD cost just USD 16.95 together.
You can buy it online at www.ktav.com.

Highly recommended!

Abbi

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