RECENT PERFORMANCES

YIDSTOCK JULY 9 2022

at The Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts

Also- a Conversation with Paul Shapiro July 8th

SUNDAY MARCH 8TH

SPECIAL MOTHER’S DAY BRUNCH

Ribs & Brisket Plays the Music of Mrs. Maisel

Featuring Cilla Owens and Eleanor Reissa

THE LOFT AT CITY WINERY 

25 11th Ave at 15th St

The band plays like a juke joint combo used to dodging beer bottles and bullets. Shapiro's nasty tenor sax breaks would have qualified him for duty at Duffy's Gaieties on Cahuenga Boulevard, when Lenny Bruce emceed for the peelers in the '50s.    Kirk Silsbee The Jewish Journal

Paul Shapiro’s Ribs & Brisket has been delighting audiences since the release of Essen, (Yiddish for eat) on Tzadik Records. Featuring the smooth and bluesy vocalist Cilla Owens and Shapiro’s soulful tenor sax they have reveled in the music of the 1930’s onward, intertwining jazz, swing and Yiddish, celebrating where the Borscht Belt intersected 52nd Street.

Shapiro loved the music chosen for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. So he’s put his Ribs & Brisket up to the task of revisiting those classics with their own spin on them.  Expect anything from Connie Francis and the Barry Sisters to Perry Como and Louie Prima! Joining them will be special guest Eleanor Reissa who has been winning audiences with her singing and acting talents but most uniquely as one of the world’s most recognized interpreters of Yiddish song.

Shapiro has composed for film, most notably an original score to accompany the 1925 silent film “His People”, and “Watermelon Woman” directed by Cheryl Dunye.  He was a founding member of Brooklyn Funk Essentials, a member of The Microscopic Septet, and led his own band Foreign Legion throughout the 1980s. Shapiro has recorded with Lou Reed, Jay-Z, Queen Latifah, Rufus Wainwright, David Byrne, Michael Jackson, Frankie Knuckles, Ofra Haza, Majek Fashek and many others.  

A heaping platter of rhythm and blues and jazz served with a schmear of classic Yiddish culture is the special of the day for this joyful outfit. Led by the exuberant saxophonist Shapiro and featuring the vocalist Cilla Owens, the Revue is always willing to time warp to an era when sympathetic musical genres regularly shared the same table. 

The New Yorker

Hard blowing, finger-snapping, klezmer-inflected jazz and wailing big city blues that suddenly slips into Yiddish.   Straight No Chaser UK 

The downtown New York jazz version of Jewish novelty maestro Mickey Katz.  

Buffalo News 

Hellzapoppin' R&B-Jewish jazz   RootsWorld 

The most impressive track on the album is the first one “Essen,” which is a massive collage of Yiddish swing, theatre-cabaret, gypsy-punk and hip-hop thrusts. What “Bohemian Rhapsody” is to Queen, “Essen” is to Paul Shapiro.   jazzreview.com