Le Matin, Paris, France: « A voyage on a Hell-bound train from Poland to Brooklyn via Mississippi which leaves the audience thunderstruck. »
Philip Elwood, San Francisco Examiner: « What Bay Area-based pop music group is the rage of Paris? Huey Lewis, Jefferson Starship? Wrong. Grateful Dead, Santana? Wrong again. The band is Berkeley's Klezmorim... [off again] to Paris where they're booked for a number of shows at the Olympia Theater, among the world's most prestigious concert halls. It just shows you what can happen when you find a pile of old records in an attic. »
Berliner Morgenpost, Germany: « The clarinet sobs and laughs, the tuba babbles and honks, the trombone howls... the percussionist whomps out the rhythm with gigantic bones... it's The Klezmorim! Giorgio Carioti of Quasimodo scored a coup when he booked the dazzling California group into his cellar club. Six specialists are at work here, reviving an old Yiddish tradition... but freeing it from museum ballast... They play with wit, verve, and joy. The Klezmorim are an overwhelming experience. »
Dr. Demento: « A really splendiferous, kinetic, zany show... A wonderful band! »
Ouest-France, Brest: « Wild... seductive... a formidable success, an unforgettable evening. The Klezmorim put on a great show... with a delightful subtlety and finesse. Faultless professionalism, a bit of craziness, and the sleight-of-hand succeeds: the audience roars, applauds, and asks for encores after a marathon-length concert. These six happy cats didn't give the audience time to breathe; the horns and drums of this deluxe brass brand created an inebriating rhythm... The many encores were exhaustive, yet the repertoire of The Klezmorim is vast. »
Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, Sweden: « Exotic tones... by the strange band The Klezmorim. This free-spirited ensemble plays... irrepressible, incredibly swinging music... The delivery was virtuosic and the results liberating. »
L.A. Weekly: « Wild, weird comedy and herky-jerky choreography! The Klezmorim have attracted middle-aged playgoer types, punk rockers, jazz musicians, little kids — you name it. In Amsterdam and Paris, where their records are aired on rock stations, they've had crowds dancing in the streets. »
L'Est Republicain, France: « Six musicians — completely off-the-wall and greatly talented... made charming music. The audience, at first perplexed, was conquered and made a partner in crime... during the hour of delirium devised by these intolerably funny spiritual brothers of Woody Allen. Jewish humor, Central European klezmer melodies, cultural evolution, the skewering of sacred cows... a grand night like no other. »
Bay Guardian, San Francisco, California: « These popular purveyors of turn-of-the-century itinerant Eastern European folk-jazz perform their swinging concert entirely in French, adding an even stranger slant to their horn, reed, and percussion amalgam of Yiddish idioms and Afro-American jazz. »
Los Angeles Times: « Six youngish zanies who deliver the musical goods — an antic goulash of swing, blues, Levantine melodies... Cheerful musical anarchy... The Klezmorim are fun! » 1987 press >>