Yosef Gutman - Tsuf Harim (2023)

Bassist Yosef-Gutman Levitt is proud to announce the release of Tsuf Harim, his second duo release with the Israeli-born, New York-based guitarist Tal Yahalom. In 2021 Levitt and Yahalom came together for Tal Yasis, an intimate duo album for upright bass and nylon and steel-string guitars that conveyed the universality of Hasidic Jewish melodies in the hands of a player with Levitt’s globe-spanning experience: from his native South Africa, to his years in the trenches of the New York jazz scene, and at last to his current physical and spiritual home in Jerusalem. On Tsuf Harim Levitt turns his attention to nigunim — traditional wordless Jewish melodies — originally compiled by Eli Rivkin.

A gifted musician, Rivkin transcribed and recorded roughly 60 of these Hasidic melodies he had learned in Lubavitch, Russia before the Hasidim’s departure from there many years ago. While many of these nigunim are familiar to versed Hasidim, many are still largely obscure and unknown. With Tsuf Harim, Levitt and Yahalom bring them to a worldwide audience for the first time, shedding light on their universal beauty, imbuing them with a warmth, sensitivity and expansive sonic palette that they’ve developed naturally together as a duo.