TIM BARSKY & EVERYDAY ENSEMBLE: The Bright River

Tim Barsky & Everyday Ensemble

The Bright River

© 2005 Everyday Theatre

CD coming back in stock soon.

If you want us to email you the minute this CD arrives, enter your name and email address here. We will not give or sell your info to anyone, and will not use it for any other reason than to tell you when it arrives.

THE BRIGHT RIVER (a mass-transit tour of the afterlife) is a hip-hop retelling of Dante's Inferno by a folklorist Tim Barsky, with a live hip hop, jazz, klezmer, and beatbox soundtrack featuring some of the top performers in the San Francisco Bay Area. T

tracks

1 Prelude
2 Wings
3 The Office
4 Transit (cab)
5 The Bus Station
6 The Souk of Purgatory
7 Soldier's Joy
8 Soldier's War
9 Soldier's Lament
10 Cadenza in 7/4
11 Transit (bus)
12 Street Corner
13 A Bouncer
14 The Conference of the Birds
15 The Raven's Story
16 Der Yiddische Bhangra
17 Transit (subway)
18 On the Rooftop of the World
19 Reverie
20 The Klippot's Speech
21 Flute-Beatbox
22 Calliope's Song
23 Coda

notes

THE BRIGHT RIVER is a hip-hop retelling of Dante's Inferno by a traditional storyteller, Tim Barsky, with a live soundtrack. performed by some of the best hip-hop and klezmer musicians in the Bay Area. A dizzying theatrical journey through a world spinning helplessly out of control, the show sends audiences on a mass-transit tour of the Afterlife. Guided by a fixer named Quick, and moving through an urban landscape that is at once both intensely real and fantastic, it is a cinema verite look at life and death in America.

The live recording captures the blend of hip-hop, physical theatre and folklore, reflecting Barsky's training as a Jewish storyteller and oral historian. Tim is also the world's first beatbox flutist, capable of producing up to 8 rhythms and melodies at the same time. Bassist and multi-instrumentalist Safa Shokrai, cellist Jess Ivry, and beatboxer/ vocal percussionist Kid Beyond (SF Weekly's "Best Beatboxer") bring a diverse set of skills and traditions to bear.

"The music of the Everyday Ensemble is unceasingly compelling." - SF Chronicle

"An amazing mish-mash of genres and style blend together in ways that up until now seemed unimaginable, producing a surrealism-meets-street edge that is enormously entertaining and unbelievably creative." - SF Examiner

"The Bright River is spoken, sung, and rapped by Tim Barsky, a traditional Jewish storyteller, beatbox flutist, and skater, who calls it "a fairytale for people who can hardly bear to believe in fairytales any more." Barsky is backed up by the Everyday Ensemble -- cellist Jess Ivry, bassist Safa Shokrai, and beatboxer Kid Beyond, aka Andrew Chaikin -- in a show that is as much a hip-hop-inflected jazz performance with vocals as it is storytelling. Together they mash up hope and rage, romance and cynicism." - East Bay Express

reviews

Please log in to review this album.

  • hauntingly beautiful modern theatrical retelling of Dante's Inferno
    author: me, sage.

    made me laugh, made me cry, pulled at my heart, pulled at my guts, amazing beatboxing talent, amazing storytelling talent. this was live theater and you can the the call and responses of the audience, and the applause for the mind-blowing beatboxing.

  • AMAZING!
    author: paula

    this cd is so awesome ... saw it in berkeley earlier this year, blew my mind then, blew my mind now ... love it!! =) tim barsky and kid beyond are awesome~!

  • If stuck on a desert island, this would be my one CD.
    author: Karin Cornwall

    This live recording contains all of the energy of the performance. When listening I can conjure up images of all of the characters in this thought provoking spoken word play. Though I don't know if play is exactly the word to describe it. I'm moved along with the bright river and become each character every time I listen. Fucking rocks my world.

  • author: Dan Rounsaville

    Amazingly good. Great story telling mixed with beatboxing mixed with music. A rare and wonderful gem. All and all an awesome set of CDs.

  • super dank
    author: Avram Ben David Ha Mackabee

    This cd is super dank. Jewliciously Bay-tastic, hella. The beats are snappin, the melodies are beautiful, the story is good. It's almost like a book on tape for parts, and other parts are straight music.

email

Please log in to email this artist.