Adrianne Greenbaum - Klezmer Flute

I've run into the work of Adrianne Greenbaum, klezmer flutist, a few times. She's the founder of The Klezical Tradition and performs solo as well. I got reintroduced to her recently. Richard Kamins, of the N'Shoma Jewish radio show, came to town and we got to hang out a bit. What a great guy (and a great radio voice). In addition to a pleasent conversation, he gave me a few discs of his recent interviews with Jewish music folks and I've been working my way through them. I particularly enjoyed his conversation with Greenbaum. I hadn't realized what a prominent role that flute played in klezmer music. As Greenbaum describes on her website, KlezmerFlute.com:

"The flute was often part of the small klezmer band; as one of the quieter instruments allowed in religious settings, it was an obvious partner with the violin and cimbalom. Early photos of larger bands show one or more flutes. ... Flutes played an important role taking the high melodic lines and fills in the early American bands of Art Shryer, Harry Kandel, and Abe Schwartz, to name but a few. Shloymke Kosch and Israel Chazin, employing exemplary tones and technical facility, are among the unfortunately all-too-few recorded flute soloists."

Greenbaum has new(ish) album, FleytMuzik, that highlights her klezmer flute playing and shows off her composition skills. I haven't heard the whole album yet, but I listened to the song clips on her website, and they're quite lovely. It's going onto my eMusic wishlist, but if you're not an eMusicer you can grab it from CDbaby.