Now here's cause for celebration: Davka has released a new album! Come join in the festivities and get an earful of the foursome's amazing virtuosity, irresistible imagination, and supple sense of swing as they feature selections from Davka Live (Tzadik), the majority of which was recorded here on our very own Freight stage.

Davka's music has been called "neo-Jewish-roots-fusion," "the acoustic equivalent of a Chagall painting," "Middle Eastern Ashkenazi jazz," and "fiddler-on-too-much-Turkish-coffee," but they're perhaps best described by their own name, a Hebrew slang term meaning "contrary to expectation." Redefining world music with seamless compositions inspired by klezmer, classical, Middle Eastern and Asian rhythms, jazz and avant garde, the group's music brims with passion, lyricism, and virtuosic interplay. Jerry Karp in the S.F. Chronicle puts it this way: "Their compositions and improvisations...weave a dancing, winding path through the diversity of Jewish cultural and historic experience."

Davka includes Paul Hanson on bassoon, Daniel Hoffman on violin, Kevin Mummey on percussion, and Moses Sedler on cello. Davka's The Golem, a recording of Daniel's dramatic score to the famed 1921 film of the same name, won last year's East Bay Express Best Local Album Award.

Visit the artist's website