Marc Crofts Klezmer Ensemble – Urban Myths (Frémeaux & Associés, 2025)
Swiss violinist Marc Crofts makes a bold entrance into the klezmer scene with Urban Myths, a project that connects tradition and innovation. Drawing from a diasporic heritage and years of immersion in Balkan, jazz, and western classical music, Crofts leads a gifted multinational ensemble, featuring musicians from Switzerland, France, Poland, and Bulgaria, through a repertoire that revives early 20th-century klezmer melodies with modern sensibilities.
Many of the pieces are adapted from Moshe Beregovski’s Soviet-era transcriptions, selected and arranged by Crofts during train rides across Europe. Although the original scores lack harmonies, Crofts reconstructed them rapidly before spending months with his ensemble refining their phrasing and flow. The result is both faithful and free: an interpretation that honors simplicity while embracing complexity.
The album’s sound palette is richly hybrid. A Ukrainian dance might include Turkish ornamentation; a Yiddish melody may be introduced with Greek phrasing; jazz improvisations drift in naturally. These remarkable stylistic fusions reflect the music’s cross-cultural origins and underscore Crofts’ vision of klezmer as a living, evolving form. His approach resists purist definitions, affirming klezmer’s history as a porous, adaptive tradition, akin to jazz in its openness.
Rooted in his early exposure to Jewish music at home, Crofts’ playing is shaped by formal studies and informal encounters alike. His tone is expressive, nuanced, and unmistakably personal. In both performance and arrangement, he reunites klezmer with its musical “cousins,” Balkan and Romani traditions, once interconnected but later dispersed by history.
Musicians: Marc Crofts on violin, vocals (Tracks 4, 8), arrangements; Atanas Marinov on clarinet; Seraphim von Werra on accordion; and Piotr Wegrowski on double bass.
Recorded at Blend Studio, Switzerland, November 2023.
Mixed & Mastered by Antoine Estoppey
Cover Photos: Nicholas Croft.
Buy Urban Myths.
Author: JGurski
