His People March 1, 2008

Take a 1925 silent film classic set in the Lower East Side, mix in a tough, but soft-hearted Jewish boxer who secretly fights to pay for his brother's law school tuition, add the nogoodnik brother who is so embarrassed by his impoverished family's old-world ways that he proclaims himself an orphan and moves uptown, throw in an Irish girlfriend, a long-suffering mother, a pushcart peddler father and then set it all to a new jazz-infused, post- Klezmer, Yiddish swing score written by acclaimed composer/ instrumentalist Paul Shapiro and you come up with the perfectly irresistible 'His People'.