La Serena

For many years, Canadian singer Aviva Chernick was the vocalist with Toronto-based klezmer group Jaffa Road. Having gone solo, she's thrown herself into Sephardic music – the other strand of Jewish music in exile. Her inspiration and mentor has been Bosnian-born Flory Jagoda, who arrived in the US after World War II. Known as ‘La Nona,’ she has long been an influential figure in Sephardic music in the US.

The set opens with ‘A Ti Espanya’, a Jagoda song expressing, in Ladino, the longing of Sephardic Jews for their homeland in Spain. The album is acoustic, with the predominant sound being Chernick's voice with Joel Schwartz on guitars and Justin Gray on bass. A few guests bring a Middle Eastern favour on oud, duduk, ney and tombak, although Schwartz's resonator guitar brings an Appalachian favour to ‘Arvoles Yoran’. There are a few biblical texts in Hebrew, but most of the songs are in Ladino. It's a loving tribute to one of the veteran figures of Sephardic music and ends with the clearly heartfelt ‘Rikordus Di Mi Nona’ (Remembering Nona).