Meadow Quartet - The Erstwhile Heroes (2013)

After the release of their debut album Unexpected the band has been described as one of the most promising on the contemporary neo-klezmer scene.
Marcin Malinowski, the band leader, is consistently expanding the scope of his artistic pursuits. To illustrate this it is enough to mention the album Osvaldo Golijov: The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind recorded with a string quartet. What is more, he also took part in the recording of the new album of Bester Quartet, which has been recently released by Tzadik Records.
Meadow Quartet – the winners of 16th Festival of Polish Radio Nowa Tradycja 2013 invited an excellent Lithuanian percussionist – Tomas Dobrovolskis to cooperate. This musician directs the music to a completely new areas. He is an inventor and designer of the new percussion instrument The Brass Globe, which allows to combine different techniques of playing drums (such as the djembe, tabla, darabuka) to one percussion instrument. In Europe he does a growing career.
On the album The Erstwhile Heroes there are nine compositions of the band leader – Marcin Malinowski. These compositions performed in almost traditional klezmer orchestration, allow the listener to extract the timeless beauty composed to measure the early twenty-first century.

Tracklist:

1. A Mystery Tour
2. The Prophecy
3. Devilish Breeze
4. Dormant Strength
5. The Master Villain of the Piece
6. Miscellaneous Muddled Thoughts
7. Bulgareasca
8. Rebirth
9. A Breath of the Sea Air Soothed the Nerves

Personnel:

Marcin Malinowski - clarinet, bass clarinet;
Michał Piwowarczyk - viola;
Piotr Skowroński - accordion;
Jarosław Stokowski - contrabass;

guest:
Tomas Dobrovolskis - percussion, the brass globe, the glass.