Monday 22 February 2010
MATT DARRIAU’S PARADOX TRIO: Benya Krik
Benya Krik (1926, film by Vladimir Vilner, after Isaac Babel)
Matt Darriau alto saxophone/clarinet/flute, Katie Down ukulele, Nir Felder guitar, Greg Heffernan cello, Seido Salifoski dombak
The Paradox Trio, founded by New York based clarinet player Matt Darriau (Klezmatics), fuses urban jazz with klezmer, Celtic folk and traditional Balkan music. The trio has created soundtracks for silent film classics like Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein) and Un Chien Andalou (Dalí/Buñuel). Benya Krik is based on a story by Isaac Babel about the Jewish underworld of Odessa in the 1920s. Immediately after its premiere in 1926 the film was labelled anti-Semitic. Darriau’s klezmer jazz perfectly matches this controversial Russian film.