Yiddish Journey: The Music of Lenka Lichtenberg

For better or worse, Jewish song often contends with a dizzying array of demands, from dealing with painful memory to building bridges across current political turmoil. The challenge you might say is twofold, to juggle these issues and simultaneously hold on to the beauty in the mix. Lenka Lichtenberg does this admirably.

Yiddish Journey is aptly named. With this record, the Czech-born Canadian singer departs from the conservatoires and piano bars of her youth and journeys to the centre of the Canadian world music scene by way of klezmer-jazz and cantorial singing. Striking collaborations pepper her route, notably with Iraqi-Israeli oud player Yair Dalal and the polished vocal tones of the Sisters of Sheynville. Meanwhile the band Fray provide the album's sonic backbone, comfortably genre-hopping from South Asia to the Middle East and Europe.

At the centre, Lichtenberg's vocals remain remarkably controlled and soulful throughout. In line with the klezmer origins of much of the Yiddish material, one can’t help feeling it would benefit to find the occasional rough-edged krecht or sob. Nonetheless, the record is a worthy testament to Lichtenberg's place at the forefront of modern hybridised Yiddish song for the past 17 years.