International, Deep in the Heart

Review: Baklava Express Friday, March 13, 2026 at Proctors GE Theatre, Passport Series

The refreshing foreign-ness of the lively international music Baklava Express made at Proctors GE Theatre Friday was only part of the picture – or the map.

The quartet spun together musical traditions from Europe to Western Asia in a tight, kinetic Middle Eastern weave: Jewish (both Ashkenazi [European] and Mizrahi [Middle Eastern/north African) – and Muslim (both Arab and Turkish). That all sounds academic, analytical – but it felt like a rush of skill and swagger, energy and intelligence.

It was country music, but from several countries; tight as chamber music, free-flying as jazz – and it felt, most inspiringly, like friendship in sound.

Leader/composer oud player Josh Kaye and violinist Daisy Castro made the melodies, stage right; opposite percussionist Jeremy Smith and bassist James Robbins. Most often, Kaye started his tunes with an ostinato in clipped percussive tones, like guitarist Jimmy Nolen in James Brown’s band. Then Kaye and Castro formed melodies together, violin etching long melodies over staccato oud phrases. Then they swapped, and swapped back again, one reeling out rhythms, the other telling tune-full tales. Smith held a djembe on his knee, clamping its body with his elbow to change the tone, like story-telling African drummers or as the subdudes Steve Amedee does with his fingers pressing the skin of a tambourine. Smith tapped the djembe head with one hand, aiming sticks or mallets at snare, toms and cymbals with the other. Just as Kaye and Castro often sounded like one musical mind with four hands, jazz-trained bassist Robbins linked tight with Smith’s busy gliding clatter.

Baklava Express, from left: Daisy Castro, Josh Kaye, Jeremy Smith and James Robbins

They played tight and loose at once, like bebop, like bluegrass. Dense and driving, it felt free as they left spaces between the notes; like what Art Neville of the Neville Brothers once told me was their “secret groove; what I don’t play.”

What Baklava Express did play were Kaye’s original compositions on their two albums, “Davka” (2023) and “Sababa,” due next month; advance copies sold fast at the merch table.

Kaye writes sounds from over there to express feelings from right here, as a British-born Jewish expatriate who discovered both gypsy jazz and Arabic music in Brooklyn. And it swung, from the misnomer-named “Kosher Bacon” to their self-named closer 80 minutes later.

Daisy Castro, above; and Josh Kaye, below

“Kosher Bacon” introduced their episodic groove-with-solos performing style, Castro bowing long-line melody over Kaye’s staccato oud chops to fit, then pushing and pulling the beat in his own solo. The faster, dance-y “Davka” felt even more rhythmic, speeding and slowing to a hard stop. The new “White Sauce Hot Sauce” honored a Brooklyn halal food truck – Kaye told us where to find it – a delicious menu of melody and busy beats that alternated clear speedy runs with trance-y drones.

Flowing slower, the mood piece “I’ll Figure It Out” found Castro and Kaye in close parallel, forming waves that built and subsided into a repeating coda. Both “Figure” and “Nistar,” which Kaye explained in his quiet English accent meant hidden or concealed, addressed a period after “Davka” and before “Sababa” as he realized he had to write more songs, whose purpose initially felt hidden from him.

Clarity arrived quickly enough – easy for us to say, in the audience – in the abrupt cadences of “Nistar;” compact, emphatic, in crisp formation by oud and violin. A stop-and-go groove pushed the solos then settled into a calmer section until a hard stop slammed the door.

“Salt and Paprika” also cruised close to home, though it could have come from anywhere between Istanbul and Cairo. It referred to the gray starting to emerge in Kaye’s red beard, with an apt, complex pointillism in short punchy passages, notably a sizzling oud and violin duet.

Kaye called an audible before the cosmologically titled “Turtles All the Way Down,” stretching his intro on repetition first, then exploration that Castro followed. Then she led, then followed again until they arrived at the coda together, then repeated it, Kaye at double-time.

He explained he wrote “Begin Again” as the first of the new songs on “Sababa,” but it appears last on the album and near the end Friday. Sparse and syncopated at first, it grew wings in Castro’s solo, then an especially strong oud break, climbing and climbing.

The new album’s title track featured short-but-cool breaks by Robbins, then Smith, who otherwise played supportively beneath oud and violin. Shorter than most tunes Friday, “Sababa” got to the point quickly.

Jeremy Smith, above; James Robbins, below

Their namesake closer “Baklava Express” did the opposite. It stretched through syncopated episodes, dense then sparser, Castro taking the last solo then cueing the B-section again as the coda. They took their bows then looked out at the crowd on its feet, glanced at each other, took up their instruments again and revved up the melody in a brief, hard-hitting departure-less encore.

Wielding a stick-like pick, Kaye relied on the oud’s deep double-stringed resonance in early-song melodic statements, then spun out in widening patterns, jazz-like, as he sped up his phrasing, like Jerry Garcia speed strums.

Tiny, the scarf around her head stretching to near her ankles all of five feet below, Castro played powerhouse, punchy passages or, as in “I’ll Figure It Out,” lyrical, relaxed musings. At times, she echoed European jazz violinists Jean-Luc Ponty or Michal Urbaniak; just as Kaye (more distantly) evoked Django Reinhardt occasionally.

Proctors Passport Series of international artists is a co-presentation with Music Haven which presents similarly globe-spinning fare summers in Schenectady’s Central Park. The Passport Series concludes May 14 with cumbria accordionist Yeison Landero. While the Proctors Passport Series offers full-season passes at a discount, Music Haven Central Park concerts are free.