It seems simple to describe “Ghetto Tango.” It is a program Adrienne Cooper sings comprised cabaret songs written by Jews in the ghettoes during the Holocaust, many of which are political, many of which are poignant and personal. If that seems to invite contradiction, then you owe it to yourself to see a rare New York performance this coming Sunday.

Sunday, January 18, 8 pm
Adrienne Cooper, Dan Rosengard & Frank London
Ghetto Tango
Satalla, 37 W. 26th St., NYC
212.576.1155
$15

If you’ve already seen the show, you’ll probably be there to hear it again. Cooper has an amazing voice, and is an amazing storyteller. Most reviewers put the album containing much of the music for the show in their annual Top Ten lists — the KlezmerShack, my website, did as well. But however good the recording is, it doesn’t begin to describe how good this show is. Cooper is one of the great vocal interpreters of Yiddish music appears with Dan Rosengard, pianist/arranger, late of Saturday Night Live; &amp Frank London, famed trumpetter/Klezmatics/ All-Star Brass Band. Together, they bring to life the extraordinary cabaret music of war-time Eastern Europe. In the Nazi-mandated ghettos during World War II, audiences gathered in makeshift clubs and theaters to hear newly-created songs, rooted in Jewish folk song, European cabaret, American jazz and Argentine tango. Jewish performers tuned these cosmopolitan songs in a local key: satirical and elegiac, political and personal, angry and heartsick, creating something scarcely conceivable: art at the edge of the abyss. Don’t miss it.