I’m here in Columbia, Maryland just for one night. I finally had a chance to get away from work see one of my new favorite bands – The Alexandria Kleztet . Today they are booked to play at Ridgewood Village in Silver Spring at 3pm, which isn’t far from Columbia. I managed to combine doing two things with my one night stay. Besides seeing The Alexandria Klezteet today, I’ll got to see ‘Hair Spray’ at Toby’s Dinner Theater last night.

Hairspray was really very fun, too bad it was performed in a Dinner Theater atmosphere, because the production quality was excellent and the performers themselves were very professional. I think it could have been performed in an actual theater. But, I guess Dinner Theaters need to make their money too. Not that I have anything against Dinner Theaters, but really, why not just do legitimate theater, why have to add a dinner to it?

As for The Alexandria Kleztet, I’ll be seeing them tonight, and they combine traditional Eastern European/Jewish music with new alive arrangements. Some members of the band have created their own original songs that bring together world beat, jazz, rock, and classical genres creating a wonderfully unique and very entertaining sound. Alexandria Kleztet is a typical klezmer orchestra, but with a jazzy approach. The electric fret-less bass is unusually quiet. The clarinet is spicy when played along side a raw fiddle, flute and drums. When the band plays a classic Yiddish tune, they actually make it very exciting, so much better than most Yiddish Traditionalists. When they play there own original music, all I can say is it’s very exciting and an adventure it where they’ll take me.

Right now, I’m just killing time in one of the cool hotels , waiting to hear what I consider one of the better traditional Eastern European bands in the United States.