A due anni dall’uscita del loro fortunato disco d’esordio (KlezRoym), che li ha consacrati come una delle migliori formazioni di klezmer al mondo, i KlezRoym proseguono con Scenì la loro esplorazione musicale nei territori della musica ebraica, senza trascurare tuttavia escursioni nel jazz contemporaneo e nelle sonorità est-europee e mediterranee; e proprio come segnale della precisa volontà di proporre una musica che varca confini e mescola culture diverse va vista la presenza nel disco di due importanti musicisti del mondo arabo, Karam Abdelmagid all’oud e Abdullah Mohamed alla darbouka, ospiti in due brani.
L’unione di una grande sensibilità artistica, di doti tecniche fuori dal comune e della raffinata eleganza degli arrangiamenti ha creato uno stile inconfondibile, che è già diventato un marchio di fabbrica riconosciuto a livello internazionale e permette al gruppo romano sia di riproporre versioni personalissime, moderne ed incisive di brani della tradizione yiddish e di quella sefardita, cioè ebraico-spagnola (i cinque "Radio Freilach"che scandiscono l’intero lavoro; "Szol a kakas mar", appartenente al repertorio ungherese "da matrimoni";"Arum de fayer"; "Morenica", antico canto popolare sefardita; la splendida "Oyfn pripetshik", una nenia per l’infanzia divenuta canzone-simbolo della Shoà, magistralmente interpretata da Eva Coen – le ultime due presenti anche in versione remix), sia di creare brani originali, senza mai tradire lo spirito antico del klezmer (l’apertura spagnoleggiante sensualità di "Trokal kazal trokar mazal", nostalgica e sensuale; la festosa"Klezmer song"; le strumentali "To East", "Scenì, scenì", "Nostalgia", "Regalo di nozze", eleganti, cariche d’atmosfera e percorse dal brivido dell’improvvisazione jazzistica), sia – infine – di regalarci, con una versione "Canzone dell’amore perduto" tutta giocata sul filo dei sentimenti, un commosso omaggio al grande Fabrizio De Andrè e alla sua passione per le musiche del Mediterraneo.




“Nella difficile e anonima realtà culturale del nostro paese il secondo lavoro discografico dei Klezroym arriva come una specie di cometa luminosa. Partendo dai colori sefarditi del brano d’apertura e scorrendo lungo la tradizione dell’Europa dell’Est, il gruppo si cimenta con alcune composizioni proprie che meritano davvero l’applauso per la maturità inventiva e per la sensibilità esecutiva. E di notevole fattura sono anche tutti gli arrangiamenti dei tradizionali ripescati dalla ricchissima letteratura popolare degli ebrei sparsi per il mondo. E hanno fatto davvero bene i sette musicisti a rendere omaggio, in chiave klezmer, alla canzone popolare di Fabrizio De Andrè nella delicata e suggestiva versione de La canzone dell’amore perduto
Un gran bel lavoro, insomma, degno di stare alla pari con le migliori formazioni klezmer internazionali.”

Paolo De Bernardin – “Musica di Repubblica”




Klezmer is the music of Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine. Both passionate and intense, and at times wild and frenetic, klezmer music has absorbed a lot of East-European and gypsy folk
music, combining it with a typically Jewish expressiveness. Apart from being highly enthralling, Klezmer is also a musical form which is in constant development, it is music which works well with new and modern sounds and instruments. 
KlezRoym, Italy's top klezmer group, take their inspiration from the Askenazite, (Eastern-European hebrew community) and Sefardite (Spanish-Hebrews) traditions and then mix these sounds with different musical cultures (Mediterranean, Middle-Eastern, Italian), thereby creating a fascinating musical bridge between ethnic / traditional music and contemporary jazz sounds.

Two tracks contained in their debut album, KlezRoym,, make up the soundtrack to the film Once We Were Strangers, by Emanuele Crialese (International Festival of Montreal and Sundance Festival'98).




"This is a lesson that I find myself learning over and over again: Never, ever underestimate humanity's ability to reconfigure venerable art forms into new, often strange objects. Just when I thought I had klezmer pretty much pegged as a musical form, I get this CD in the mail.
KlezRoym is a band out of Italy who combine the fervor and stylings of klezmer with the improvisation of Gypsy jazz and the feel of Mediterranean music. Sure, all klezmer, being the hybrid genre that it is, has a little Gypsy, a little jazz, and maybe a little Mediterranean harmony. But KlezRoym, a seven-person unit
consisting of Gabriele Coen, Andrea Pandolfo, Pasquale Laino, Riccardo Manzi, Marco Camboni, Leonardo Cesari, and Eva Coen, add their own mixture of moxy, imagination, and excellent improvisational skills to the music. The absence of any fiddles or clarinets and the emphasis on saxophones, bouzoukis, and
trumpets give the music of KlezRoym a distinctly forthright, sultry sound.
From the beginning track, "Trokar Kazal, Trokar Mazal (Change Country, Change Fate)," a Latin-flavored song about an Spanish exile pining for his homeland, we know we're in for a treat. Eva Coen's singing is simultaneously sensual and mournful, which is echoed in the plaintive saxophones and trumpet of Gabriele Coen, Pasquale Laino, and Andrea Pandolfo. The song meanders into an extended instrumental, the arrangement of which easily recalls some of the 3 Mustaphas 3's best work.
This is just the beginning -- literally. From here, KlezRoym prove how little they can sit still, moving from the ska-flavored klezmer of "To East," which ends with a wonderfully discordant guitar solo, to the melancholy Italian love song "Canzone Dell'Amour Perduto (Song of Lost Love)," written by Fabrizio De Andrè, then
onto the Jewish-Hungarian hora "Szol A Kakas Mar (And the Cock Crow)."
Interspersed between many of these tracks are snippets of "Radio
Freylach"'s. A "freylach" (meaning "joy" in Yiddish) is a standard melody form in klezmer, like the czardas in Hungarian music and the jig in the music from the Isles. The half-minute freylachs that KlezRoym uses here to introduce their tracks are all
traditional tunes, which they've recorded in mono, giving them an "old-time radio" sound.
Guitarist and bouzouki player, Riccardo Manzi, gets to stretch his vocal chords in "Arum Dem Fayer (Around the Campfire)." Its haunting melody runs counter to the gaiety of the lyrics about the Gypsy life of song and dance. This ends abruptly to the klezmer and jazz hybrid sounds of the title track "Sceni, Sceni."
Rather than just the almost standard sounds of Gypsy jazz that is often found within klezmer, one can also hear some strains of the cool jazz that was pioneered by Miles Davis back in the late '50's.
KlezRoym fills the rest of the CD with just as various a selection of music from the dirge-like "Nostalgia," which is immediately lightened up by the up-beat jazz improv of "Regalo Di Nozze," to "Klezmer Song," KlezRoym's own celebration of klezmer music, and the foreboding Sephardic folk song, "Morenica." The CD
"officially" ends with the lullaby "Oyfn Pripetshik (At The Fireplace)," a popular children's song which prisoners of the death camps of Europe would often sing to each other and thus has become a symbol of the Shoah.
Rather strangely, there are two bonus tracks, old-style house versions of "Morenica" and "Oyfn Pripetshek." They're a bit of a shock after the traditional sounds of the previous tracks, but they are a transition back to more modern sounds.
There really is no way any self-respecting klezmer or Gypsy jazz lover would want to miss this CD. Actually, anyone with a passing interest in traditional European music will find plenty to enjoy on this CD."


Brendan Foreman - Greenmanreview





"The klezmer revival continues unabated throughout the world, and this Italian entry into the scene is a notable one.. Singer Eva Coen leads the songs with a natural, open style, the reed/horn section is tight, with arrangements that defy categories, and the strings (violin, guitar, bouzouki) lend a dry authenticity, augmented by an often
funk-driven electric bass. Leonard Cesari is superb in his use of both traditional percussion and kit drum. A clear, winning example of the band's ability to do it all at once is 'Danza Immobile', a moody soundtrack piece that reaches deep into the tradition and comes out far removed from it, punched up by a distant sounding flugelhorn and a contemporary rock groove. They play old freylachs with verve, traditional slow dances with grace and energized originals with passion" 


Cliff Furnald - RootsWorld





"KlezRoym's music is beautiful, earthy, lively and at times amusing, with noteworthy Arabic influences, highly rhythmic" 

Laura Putti - La Repubblica

"These dances with a gypsy flavour, invented by gypsies and genial wanderers, live once more in the intriguing KlezRoym atmospheres veined with jazz, without making you feel the weight of centuries "


Giuseppe Videtti - TrovaRoma, La Repubblica



"In the heart of the rhythmic ravine you suddenly feel a melody as soft as caress: a result of the influences from the Sephardites, the Arabic areas of Spain, from North Africa. And when to the group is added Massimo Coen, and his violin flies like a Chagall character, the tremendous power of this music becomes explicit".


Sandro Cappelletto - La Stampa



"Islamic influences, jazz arrangements, gypsy vibrations, jerky Balcanic movements, minimalist approaches: with KlezRoym the strong remote Hebrew matrix is strongly felt and breathes in a world which is looking for new identities and greater bewilderment"


Pinotto Fava - RaiTre



"Sounds like an ancient underground vocation, whether the voice or the musical instrument, of the heart's memory. Sounds of words which caress the Mediterranean waves with talk of mothers, lands, birth, deat, silence, life-beats. Eternal".


Simona Marchini

"

The first notes of the first CD of this Klezmer formation are so destructive that the listener remains attached to the sounds as if in a dream".


Giuseppe Videtti - Musica di Repubblica