The new baritone singer, Merlin Shepherd offers a strong and folky voice, passionate and sensitive. The new alto, Evgenia Slavina, also with a strong folk element to her voice offers a great depth, strength and thoughtfulness. With Polina Shepherd and Yana Ovrutskaya as the longest standing members of the quartet, the sound is warm, robust and yet still fresh and sweet.

New instrumentation comes as piano, clarinet, tenor sax, electric guitar and double bass.

The tunes and arrangements themselves show a maturity and development of Polina"s style. From the opening track, the ubiquitous ai-yai-yai with its raunchy soloing and greatly entertaining ending to the simple and delicate shpitsn berg, sung a capella, a delicious nugget of sweet sound.....This remarkable recording captures even more of the passion, pain, joy and bittersweet world of yiddishkeit than she acheived previously, and now even with electric guitar bringing the sound of this terrific ensemble bang up to date. Polina"s composing, arranging and overall musicality have taken a daring step into previously unchartered waters. Indeed, the quartet really now finds itself "on the other side of the river"!

CD FUN YENER ZAYT LID 2002

Sometimes the Universe speaks Yiddish. National culture as a reflection of the depth and all common to all mankind, mystical and metaphorical…

Jewish features are always present in the creative work of the Ashkenazim as much as the Universal Truth is part of everyone of us: it bursts forth as a musical image from composer P. Achkinazi, it breathes with improvisations and laughter of musicians and cries with the tears of the audience.

At the Other Side of the Song we meet real people: we hear childhood (Dem Vinteles Shpileklekh, 2), much cheerful and inextinguishable imagination of dreams (Fun Vos Zaynen Khaloymes Gemakht, 7), much longing for one"s beloved (Di Ershte Vund in Harts, 4; In der Fremd, 6) These characters are excellently executed by languid Yana Ovrutskaya and picturesque V. Gafner, – a tearing apart of poverty and despair (Der Gasn Poyker, 13) executed by a singer with a great actor"s gift A. Ivakh. And beneath the veil of the mirror one can imagine a drunken party (Der Shiker Nign, 14) and many silent shadows – niggunim. Feel as you like, in fact it is all unreal, memories, a world behind the mirror…

Characters from The Jewish street (2001) were mirrored in the new melodies of a Creator, his severe reflection of the Universal mission (Vos bin Ikh on Mayn Folk, 16). It"s quite at one with the world outlook of the composer of the music of this program, Polina Achkinazi. My life has been upside-down for a long time ("Dem Shokhns Meydele",15). Vice versa. From right to left. In Yiddish.

DI YIDISHE GAS 2001

Adrienne Cooper for the coming CD Di Yidishe Gas:
“The CD you hold in your hand, Di Yidishe Gas, represents a new breath in Yiddish culture. It arrives among a worldwide renewal of Yiddish song, reimagined from folk and theater sources, newly heard by a generation of young musicians, their ears filled with world music, their hearts inclined toward Yiddish. Yidishe Gas is an impassioned journey of the imagination…

…As a Yiddish singer myself, and a teacher of singers, these four are a gift to me as well – first students, then, grown into colleagues that I never dreamed I would discover, half a world away, and as close as my own thoughts, my own breath. I remember hearing Polina for the first time, a number of years ago, in St. Petersburg, where I had gone to teach musicians from the former Soviet Union – and I can still conjure the shock of recognition. This is what Yiddishland sounded like – what I imagine it sounded like. That was before Polina and her colleagues created their Yidishe gas / Jewish street. But, of course, this CD is not what Yiddishland sounded like at all – instead it is the dreamt of, the struggled with, the pushed away and then drawn close soul of Yiddish, wedded to impatient, sensual, joyous young sensibilities. Welcome to a new Yidishe gas.”

CD JAM-DA 2001
In 2001 the ensemble released their first CD Jamda. The disc presents Yiddish folk songs adapted for ensemble a cappella and accompanied by Klezmer ensemble Simkha. The disc was named after track #6 Jam-da, which is a Hassidic niggun, a tune with no words, which can be sung along any syllables. The composition itself is built upon polyphonic equality of four parts and includes and added extra, percussion.

There are several original arrangements for popular Jewish songs: Idl with a fiddle track #2, Let the Messiah come track #12, Sabbath song A Woman of Valour track #3. They are popular throughout the Yiddish song world and sung the world over.

Recruitment songs rarely attract any attention from Russian musicians. "Farewell, dear parents" track #10 is sung by a young man who is recruited to serve in the Tzar army for 25 years. The Polka track #1 is credited to M. Glinka. Glinka arranged a Jewish folk dance. Unlike his composition, ours starts with an almost exact reproduction of a classical polka, and then gradually finds Jewish elements in the supporting voices and harmony; thus the melody returns to its originally folk version...

Ay-yay-yay track #14 was composed by Polina Achkinazi. Ay-yay-yay has become a peculiar hit of the ensemble.