Sheshbesh

Sheshbesh are four Israeli musicians (on flute, oud, bass and percussion) that pretend to bridge the gap between Jewish and Arab folk-music and thus create greater understanding. They are classically trained and living proof of the fact that it requires different talents to play the violin or the fiddle. Their note-for-note playing leaves not a half inch of room for joy or emotion and make each song sound similar: soporific. I bought this cd because there are two compositions by Benjamin Yusupov, whom I like very much. But same mistake here: he's an accomplished classical composer, but folk is quite different. The other tunes were also written specially for the group or are adaptations. Nowhere do they come close to Night Ark, who with quite much the same instrumentation, can move the listener and make their music sound varied and soar to great heights.A buy that is going to be shelved, never again to be listened to.