(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., March 15, 1998) -- For the past few weeks, in its "From the Old World to the New" world-folk series, the Clark Art Institute has been presenting performing groups that take as their starting point traditional folk musics and build upon them to create new works that speak to contemporary audiences while acknowledging their traditional roots.

Thus, the Celtic group Anam updated traditional Irish dance forms by giving them a rhythmic boost borrowed from rock music, and Wayfaring Strangers approached traditional Appalachian mountain music with the freewheeling spirit of the jazz improviser.

This past Sunday afternoon, in the third of four concerts in the Clark's series -- the concluding show, the African Troubadours, will take place this coming Saturday night -- Brave Old World gave a vivid demonstration of this ongoing folk process, in its case building a new Jewish art music atop a foundation of Old World Klezmer.

While the quartet's performance certainly had its share of hand- clapping, foot-stomping moments, nodding to Klezmer's roots as a dance or party music, the musicians spent most of the afternoon making a very strong case for Klezmer as listening music on a par with any serious concert music.

Boasting the compositional and arranging skills of a new-classical quartet and the versatility and improvisational bent of a jazz ensemble, Brave Old World played a dynamic and innovative program of its original instrumental and vocal music that blended traditional sonorities with a host of non-Klezmer and contemporary influences.

The first, and probably more successful half of the program, was arranged as a kind of suite, with individual songs or "movements" leading into one another, much as they do on the group's most recent CD, "Blood Oranges" (Pinorrekk), from which most of the material on Sunday was drawn.

The suite was presented in character, with frontman Michael Alpert acting the part of badkhn, the Yiddish equivalent of master of ceremonies, singing and jesting in the language of the old country. While a literal translation of Alpert's spiel was lost on most of the audience, words like "Williamstown," "Berkshires" and "President Clinton" popped out of the Yiddish, so one got at least an inkling of what Alpert was talking about.

The music, however, needed no translation. As complex and sophisticated as some of the arrangements were, they spoke clearly and directly in their portrait of a landscape that included the lost world of Eastern European Jewry. In their eloquence and inventiveness, however, they spoke with equal force of a living, vibrant culture, one that is simultaneously undergoing a renaissance and a metamorphosis, thanks in large part to the fearless efforts and creative genius of groups like Brave Old World.

The quartet, featuring Alpert on violin and vocals, Alan Bern on piano and accordion, Kurt Bjorling on clarinet and Stuart Brotman on bass and cymbalom, was equally at ease with delicate, mournful melodies and highly-charged, rhythmic dances, often within the same number.

A showpiece like "The Heretic" -- a musical exploration paralleling the Diaspora -- was typical of the group's strategy. It began with classical and symphonic piano figures before turning full-circle on a dime and breaking into a wild tango, with Bjorling blowing Stan Getz- like leads and Alpert crooning in Ladino, the language of the Sephardic Diaspora. Bern then played a quiet piano solo, a sort of new-age gospel ballad, which slowly built into an all-group bebop session.

The musicians made the most of their flexibility, with each getting several moments in the spotlight and with occasional pairings of duos and trios, including a lovely medieval-style melody by Bern on accordion and Bjorling on ocarina. They also were a great pleasure to watch, as they were fully engaged in each other's playing. The enthusiasm they shared was contagious, as was their joy in this most ancient of modern musics.

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