Horeb Records  released their latest CD, Piety and Desire. Original music composed by Neil Blumofe, cantor and jazz vocalist, bringing together the resounding voices of jazz with traditional Jewish liturgy and chant. Blumofe’s music summons the world as we signify love – past, present and future. Recorded in New Orleans, Piety and Desire is as well - a love song to the times, places and people of that great city.  This album brings together top jazz musicians such as Jason Marsalis, Roland Guerin, Maurice Brown and Alex Coke as well as Jewish musicians Mark Rubin and Steven Greenman, whose work, in partnership with Blumofe’s vocals and fine cantorial improvisations create a rare collaboration of excellence and spirit. The music, played on instruments ranging from the vibraphone to the bass flute, captures the many emotions and nuances of the marriage, from the tender to the exuberant.

The Review: Piety and Desire is a monumental musical accomplishment. At first, I did not know what to make out of it? How to classify and categorize this music? For it has all the elements, wealth and epic traits of a Ben Hur production,  a blend of an ethereal bridal chorus and cantorial ecstasy, a Salome imperial dance, a tabernacle crescendo, a Sanhedrin liturgical chant, a humanistic New Orleans Jazz, a sacred Gypsy flair a la Bartok,  a Selicha (Confession) mode in a synagogue, a bleeding rebellious ballade from the Vilna ghetto,   a mystical Judaic anthem, a mystic beauty of a Budapest mysterious unfinished symphony awaiting the grand entrance of a Mata Hari being transformed into a priestess. The sounds of clarinet, muted trumpet,  the cadence and rhythm of the drums,  maybe a hidden outcry of a Shofar,  daring violin strokes, and the voice of Neil Blumofe grab your whole universe and transmute it into an elixir of a holy musical exodus. The music is humanistic yet defiant. The arrangements challenge dogmatic music, for the orchestration embraces a multitude of instruments rarely used in one single musical composition, especially, when the soprano sax flirts with the oud, and the vibraphone melt into a tuba.  Jason Marsalis was a magician on the drums, whistle and vibraphone.