Hanukkah music isn’t just for the holidays. That’s the obvious point of Shimmering Lights’ release date half a year away from December. The album’s larger issue is the way Yale Strom’s Broken Consort uses klezmer as a base for digressing into the other interests of its members. Shimmering Lights’ diversity echoes not only the origins of its music in Jewish traditions from the Near East as well as Eastern Europe, but its incorporation of rhythms and timbres from jazz and other music. The players are sensitive and in the moment with each other as they support the lyrics (most of them in Yiddish and Ladino).
