“Ulehla careens, sails, and shimmers through the varied interpretations with penetrating strength—her singing is sometimes heavenly and ethereal, sometimes gruff and earthy, as though she were channeling the spirit of a hardscrabble village woman who's known these songs her whole life.”
-Peter Margasak, Peter Margasak’s 40 Favorite Albums of 2017, Numbers 10 through 1 (Dálava is number 8), Chicago Reader, January 2018 https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2018/01/05/peter-margasaks-40-favorite-albums-of-2017-numbers-10-through-1
“One of the ten best live concerts in Vancouver in 2017”
-Stuart Derdeyn, Vancouver Sun, December 2017 https://vancouversun.com/entertainment/celebrity/the-10-best-live-concerts-in-vancouver-in-2017
“Somehow, the old songs retain their deep connection to the landscape that produced them, even when recast in expansive new avant-jazz and prog-folk trappings.”
-The Georgia Straight, 50 Albums That Shaped Vancouver, May 2017, Dálava designated as the most influential album to come out of Vancouver in the year 2017. https://www.straight.com/music/904286/50-albums-shaped-vancouver
“Every now and then an album appears that is so overwhelming and so intense that it is hard to put into any category. Such is the case with The Book of Transfigurations, the second release by Dálava...Saying that The Book of Transfigurations is a masterpiece is not an exaggeration.”
-Bas Springer, fRoots, August 2017 (print only)
“Moravian magician…captivating vocalist Julia Ulehla”
-Josef Woodard, Downbeat, May 27, 2017 http://downbeat.com/news/detail/fimav-keeps-avant
“One of the most artistically adventurous albums released in 2017, a recording that grows more compelling on repeated listening...Dálava's palette is blended from a wide range of musical colors, and by not trying to produce an album that fits neatly inside jazz, world music, or new classical category boundaries, they are more free to innovate and explore. The Book of Transfigurations is one of least cautious albums I've heard in years. The opening fragment of an archival recording is immediately followed by two loud, punk-art-rock songs, which in a way belies the overall tone of the set. The emotional center lies in the quieter, more sparsely arranged tracks in the middle of the album; listeners really need to hear it all the way from beginning to end without distraction to appreciate the complicated task the musicians have undertaken.”
-Mark Werlin, All About Jazz, December 2017 https://www.allaboutjazz.com/dalava-gordon-grdina-and-mikkel-ploug-songs-old-and-sounds-new-mikkel-ploug-by-mark-werlin.php?page=1
“The album is not so much a fusion, more an exciting collision of tradition with experimentation, one that will equally appeal to fans of folk, avantgarde improv and jazz.”
-Jo Frost, Songlines Magazine, July 2017 (print only)
“In concert, in either band or duo format, Bajakian and Ulehla create a sound that is achingly intimate. Their love for the music and for each other is beautifully evident, and not in any kind of saccharine fashion: it’s as if they share a mutual incandescence.”
-Alexander Varty, Musicworks, #128 Summer/Fall 2017 (print only)
“It’s an album that manages to be thoroughly rooted in its Moravian past while still pushing ahead into the 21st Century, a complete, radical reinvention of Moravian music. Ulehla is the linchpin, with a voice that can seduce like Lorelei on the rocks one moment, then turn strident and martial, passionate and sinuous; while guitarist Aram Bajakian, whose credits include working with John Zorn, offers an instrumental counterpoint. The rest of the six-piece band deserve equal billing, not just for their playing, but also for their invention. These are songs to disturb and to lull, of past and family. Mysterious, yes, but also filled with a curious beauty.”
-Chris Nickson, fRoots, July, 2017 (print only)
“Ulehla let herself completely be taken in by her music during the show. Her entire body was the instrument. One moment she’s shaking as though possessed by some mad demon; another she’s sitting in thoughtful reflection at the foot of the stage. The portal can be opened at any second.”
-Brent Holmes, Vancouver Weekly, December 2017 https://vancouverweekly.com/dalava-cannot-contain-their-intensity-59438-2/
“What I felt drew everyone in was the extraordinary singing of Ms. Ulehla, from sad ballads, to heart-wrenching tales of woe to soaring, rocking, intense levels of ecstatic transmissions…At one point she was dancing in circles and I thought the she and the rest of band would start to levitate. It was one of those transcendent performances that will stay in our memories for a long time.”
-Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery, New York, review of FIMAV performance, June 2018 http://www.fimav.qc.ca/documents/Archives2018/revuedepresse/downtownmusicgallery-june2018.pdf
“Tender and haunting..., The Book of Transfigurations is an intimate and elegant paean to Ulehla's ancestral heritage. It is far from a mere retelling of a historic cultural expression destined for museums. On the contrary, what makes the album unique is its vivid and soulful rendition of this slice of popular art, thus preserving it by exposing its enduring relevance.”
-Hrayr Attarian, All About Jazz, May 2017 https://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-book-of-transfigurations-dalava-songlines-recordings-review-by-hrayr-attarian.php
“An utterly captivating and addictive recording.”
-The Vancouver Sun, April 2017 https://vancouversun.com/entertainment/music/music-reviews-dalava-five-alarm-funk-vancouver-inter-cultural-orchestra-and-omnisight
“The Book of Transfigurations is full of songs of moving beauty. Singer Úlehla sparkles and each song gets a fitting, tasteful and exciting musical performance...a unique and beautiful album.”
-Opduvel, May 2017 (translated from Dutch) https://opduvel.com/2017/05/19/dalava-the-book-of-transfigurations/
“Ulehla provides beautiful vocalization, and while all the lyrics are in Czech, the inflection of her voice exudes emotion. Her singing portrays shades of sadness and happiness that flow with the instrumentals…Throughout the record, the guitar emits everything from wavy distortions, to low dreamy tones. Reflecting at times off the drumming, Dálava toss in jazzy progressions, or turn up with rock intensity...Dálava have created a unique work that captures a sense of culture and history that is intriguing. Its range of instruments and radiant singing generate an intimate reaction to the music, connecting the listener into the atmosphere. It is a work that presents just enough to guide one on a journey to learn more about the magic found in other parts of the world.”
-New Noise Magazine, April 2017 https://newnoisemagazine.com/review-dalava-book-transfigurations/
“It’s astonishing music and the story behind its creation is emblematic of how Old World traditions can be born again, thousands of miles and several generations away from their roots.”
-The Georgia Straight, March 2017 https://www.straight.com/arts/878461/julia-ulehla-finds-new-musical-path-through-her-extraordinary-folk-heritage
“Úlehla’s voice is haunting, there is a compressed urgency and a folksiness that doesn’t quite settle into, or leave, your ears... Such contrasts of old and new, and stylistic juxtapositions make the album compelling, while the language leaves many listeners simply hanging onto the expressive emotion of Úlehla’s voice rather than the meaning - the translations, invoking timeless themes, are provided within the accompanying booklet.”
-Paul Acquaro, The Free Jazz Collective, May 2017 http://www.freejazzblog.org/2017/05/dalava-book-of-transfigurations.html
“At center stage, the husband-and-wife duo stole the heart of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival. Úlehla began each song with a translation from the Czech--words written with the understanding that songs are intimately woven through the particular place on earth from which they emerge. Songs are just like organisms, Dr. Úlehla would determine with his ear for ethnomusicology. Songs are adaptable and living. Dálava exudes a reverence for the creative potency of ecological awareness. From the western edge of the Carpathian mountains, where the lyrics were scratched out of the Central European landscape, to the gargantuan madhouse of New York City, where Bajakian and Úlehla source their musical rise, the Coast Salish territories of Canada received the performance of an animate song cycle that thrives, renewed in the lush Pacific air. The harmonic charm of Úlehla's voice dazzled all present, in contradistinction with Bajakian's wild magnificence. Accompanying with an especially entrancing quality, Peggy Lee’s cello breathed masterfully through her unique, often abstract, touches. Dr. Úlehla inhabited a world rising from the black earth of mortality, where childhood is a feathery gift lost at a fair, and where love is "never stable, like water between the banks.”
-Broadway World Reviews, Dálava Intrigues at the Ironworks, June 2015https://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwmusic/article/BWW-Reviews-DLAVA-Intrigues-at-The-Ironworks-20150623
“[Compared with the previous performer,] the stage banter and the mastery especially of the singer Julia Ulehla and the guitarist Aram Bajakian of Dálava (second place apparently) are different. Here we decidedly enter another world. Immediately, Ulehla is able to enchant the foreign audience with her candid and child-like-joy-full English. She comes from the world of Belcanto and does not need a microphone. Even though it is filled with audience, she dominates the acoustics of the room with her body and energy field, without amplification. Without effects, pure, she manages not to be intimidated by the surrounding industrial complex—truly courageous. With the help of the group, she succeeded in bringing historical Moravian folk song inside, to the forbidden city of steel. Dálava doesn't seem to come from above, but from below the ground, connected to the deep roots that we still find below, in the coal mine or under the Athanor. The sound in some tracks seemed a psychedelic combination between Neil Young, Lou Reed, Velvet Underground and bizarre blues rock. Every song in Julia's soul was represented as a living organism, a living cell of memory with its vital energy. From the acoustic to the amplified, their disruptive passage was able to awaken, through a distant musical call of ancient sounds, some sleeping parts deeply present in us. Thus, making the spirit of their latest album The Book of Transfigurations live, through a dancing and hypnotizing performance among those present. Something in us was reborn after the breaking of space-time boundaries. Dálava has transfigured us, transporting us to another world, from bottom to top. With their humanity, they have been able to dominate the machine of big industry, with all its stench of sulfur. That is why they are the ones who morally won the 2018 edition.”
-Daniel Spizzo, Folk Bulletin, September 2018, (translated from Italian) https://www.folkbulletin.com/czech-music-crossroads-2018-le-avanguardie-di-folk-e-world-music/