Riverdale

Kosmos is a string trio who play their own arrangements of mainly Sephardic and Eastern European music mixed with tango, a leavening of Rebetika and a seasoning of American musical and Edwardian English classical.

Their presentation is good, their musicianship fine and their arrangements excellent but you can't take the white middle class girl out of the mix, their approach is a little too genteel for the music. They are, however, probably aware of this as they use it to great effect in some arrangements. There is great rapport between them especially when wittily conducting 'conversations' between their instruments.

Highlights for me were a cello driven rendition of a North African poem, the way they rose up to the heights of the lark's flight from The Lark Ascending to come tumbling down into a Roumanian Gypsy dance, and the introduction of almost Edwardian tea dance sections to a tango.