My friend, Jezra Kaye, sent me this review of a recent concert of a band that includes Prospect Heights bassist, Jerome Harris. Harris has played with so many jazz musicians I don’t know where to begin. For starters, Jack DeJohnette, Bill Frisell, Ray Anderson, Don Byron, Bobby Previte, Oliver Lake, Amina Claudine Myers, Bob Stewart, George Russell, Julius Hemphill, and Bob Moses. The excerpt from Jazz Times, describes a wonderful new band that brings together klezmer, funk and hip-hop.

Hopefully a CD will be out in the not-too-distant future, and OTBKB will let you know when they’re coming to Brooklyn. As Jezra said, “In the meantime, we can all just enjoy that such a thing exists!J Happy Almost-4th of July, and much love to all.”

This endlessly surprising yet highly successful hybrid of klezmer, funk and hip-hop had the enthusiastic crowd—young and old, Jews and gentiles, whites and blacks—dancing ecstatically in the aisles like it was a Jewish wedding. Wesley brought the funk while virtuoso clarinetist David Krakauer delivered the passionate intensity and deep Jewish soul that ties him to the lineage of klezmer clarinet kings like Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras. Montreal-based multi-instrumentalist and visionary beat architect Josh Dolgin, aka Socalled, provided a bridge between the klezmer and hip-hop worlds with his audacious Hebraic rapping while the Bronx-bred emcee C-Rayz Walz brought street cred to this unlikeliest of collaborations with his remarkable freestyling facility and stark urban imagery.