Michael Alpert

A Jumpin' Night in the Garden of Eden was the first film to document the klezmer revival, tracing the efforts of two founding groups, Kapelye and Boston's Klezmer Conservatory Band, to recover the lost history of klezmer music. For nearly a millennium, this vigorous and soulful music was part of the celebration of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. In the early decades of this century, the music took root in America. Klezmer musicians learned hundreds of tunes by ear and their ears were open to Gypsy, Ukrainian and Greek melodies of the old world, as well as to the new sounds of American jazz. Music born in Eastern Europe lived on in the imaginations of composers for New York's Yiddish theater, men whose tunes entered the mainstream through such unlikely adapters as the Andrew Sisters. Eventually Klezmer went underground as its audience assimilated into mainstream American culture.

The story of five secretive characters, told with Klezmer music. Five 21st century young and not so young men someplace in the world. They are musicians in search for someone and something which might have been born in their imagination. Once upon a time in the beginning of the 20th century there lived a Klezmer musician and storyteller Prince Nazaroff. Many people don’t believe he ever existed, but these five do. They have imagined him, and imagination can be stronger than reality. To this day, Nazaroff lives in them. They can’t except that something could disappear forever. They call themselves ‘The Brothers Nazaroff’. A deeply emotional story told through Klezmer music about identity, emigration, inner emigration, brothers and godbrothers, religion and belief, faith and disbelief. A modern story about our strange world we live in.