Tzimmes - The Road Never Travelled (2021)

The Road Never Travelled is a double disc (total running time: 85' +), the first presents more secular pieces, while the second, subtitled Liturgy Lane, offers up a healthy diet of original music based on sacred texts. Some of the songs on disc one, including the title track, are English pop/folk/world repertoire, and indeed the album is not entirely Jewish music in Jewish languages. The entire double disc collection of 18 tracks has a recording and mixing history that spans a period of 28 years, so it is in part a loving glance at the past, and in part a confident vision of the future.

It has been 23 years since the last Tzimmes release, KlezMyriad, but the ensemble has not been idle. From 1998 until 2005, the group still did some concerts and some larger scale projects as well. It is impossible to encapsulate 23 years into a cogent statement of a paragraph or two, so suffice it to say that Tzimmes has gone through some transformations, as is usual and normal in the profession; and yet, it continues to be a family of musicians and colleagues, bound together by a common musical purpose.

1.01 - Tzimmes - Cuando El Rey Nimrod (When King Nimrod) (4:55)
1.02 - Tzimmes - Ahavat Hadasa - Libi V'mizrakh (The Love of Hadasa - My Heart Is in the East) (5:38)
1.03 - Tzimmes - Oyfn Veg (On the Way) (7:25)
1.04 - Tzimmes - The Road Never Travelled (6:28)
1.05 - Tzimmes - Sweet Melissa (9:58)
1.06 - Tzimmes - Joy to Your Land (2:38)
1.07 - Tzimmes - Moishe's Freylakh (3:04)
1.08 - Tzimmes - Mashiakh Hazaken (Messiah the Elder) (6:45)
1.09 - Tzimmes - In My Life (4:17)
2.10 - Tzimmes - Hashmi-Ini (Let Me Hear Your Voice) (2:14)
2.11 - Tzimmes - L'hadlik Ner Shel Shabbat (Lighting the Sabbath Candles) (2:06)
2.12 - Tzimmes - Shalom Aleichem (Peace Be Unto You) (3:49)
2.13 - Tzimmes - Adon Olam (Ruler of the Universe) (4:44)
2.14 - Tzimmes - Simkha L'artsecha (Joy to Your Land) (4:37)
2.15 - Tzimmes - Shiviti Adonai L'negdi Tamid (I Have Set Hashem Always Before Me) (2:23)
2.16 - Tzimmes - Hashem Yishmorcha (May the Lord Watch over You) (5:16)
2.17 - Tzimmes - Vechitetu (Swords into Ploughshares) (4:46)
2.18 - Tzimmes - Biy'mei Hayai (The Days of My Life) (4:16)