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Sept. 30, 2005
Music for most tastes
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
From rock to Brazilian rhythms, Tchaikovsky to Bernstein, off-Broadway
to off-the-bimah, the CDs reviewed by the Independent this
Rosh Hashanah cover the gamut. There aren't any ground-breaking
or phenomenal recordings, but there are many worth adding to your
collection.
Rockin' with the Torah
With their second CD, 70 Faces, the rock band Blue Fringe
again manages to make believing in God and Torah cool. Their first
recording, called My Awakening, has sold some 13,000 copies
to date and 70 Faces is a more even, better-sounding effort
overall, so it should do at least as well.
Comprised of four friends who met at Yeshivah University
Dov Rosenblatt (singer, guitarist, songwriter), Avi Hoffman (lead
guitarist, composer), Danny Zwilenberg (drummer) and Hayyim Danzig
(bass) Blue Fringe's acoustic sound is akin to that of Phish
or John Mayer. Their lyrics, which are in both English and Hebrew,
couldn't be more different, however.
In "Lo Irah" ("I Will Not Fear"), they
sing plainly of God: "I mask the fear upon my face and put
a smile in its place; a fragile smile holds my faith in you....
You are with me, I won't fear." In the title track, "70
Faces," the band is referring to the 70 faces of Torah.
In the cheeky "Shidduch Song," where shidduch means
a fixed blind date with the intention of marriage, the chorus is
hilarious: "I got set up on Monday. We went on the shidduch
on Tuesday. We had the l'chaim by Wednesday. Only Simchas Thursday
and Friday, and Shabbos. The wedding is on Sunday. Sheva brachos
Monday ... [and throughout the week] ... move to Teaneck on Sunday."
Not all listeners will know that the l'chaim is the engagement
party, Only Simchas is a website featuring wedding and engagement
announcements and sheva brachos (seven blessings) is a custom
in which the newlyweds are joined by friends and family for seven
nights following the wedding ceremony. But it won't matter, they'll
still want to sing along.
For more information on Blue Fringe, visit www.bluefringe.com.
Brazil in Middle East
Elisete Retter, or simply, Elisete, is a singer-songwriter who
was born in Brazil and has lived in Israel since 1991. According
to a recent Jerusalem Post article on her, Elisete's roots
are mixed: one of her grandmothers was Indian, her maternal family
is Sephardi and her paternal relatives hail from Africa. So it's
not surprising that her first CD, Luar e Café, reflects
this diversity.
The lyrics are in Hebrew and Portuguese. The styles include Bossa-Nova,
samba, forro, baiao and other Brazilian rhythms. The unifying factors
are Elisette's wonderful, rich voice and the optimism that permeates
all her songs.
She and her band of five musicians are currently working on a new
CD, due out at the end of the year. Last month, Elisete's second
single, "Shalom Dikaon" ("Goodbye Depression")
was released. The new album is said to highlight her hopeful perspective
of Israel.
More on Elisete can be found at www.elisete.com.
Arab-Israeli orchestra
In the 1990s, renowned Jewish pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim
happened to meet the late Edward Said, professor, writer and Palestinian
supporter. They met in a London hotel and hit it off, talking for
hours and discovering that they had similar visions of Israeli and
Palestinian co-operation. This dialogue led to Barenboim's first
concert in the West Bank, a piano recital in February 1999, and
to a workshop for young musicians (ages 14 to 25) from the Middle
East that took place in Weimar, Germany, in August 1999.
The West-Eastern Divan Workshop took two years to organize and involved
musicians from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia and Israel.
The idea was that they would come together to make music on neutral
ground, under the guidance of some of the world's best musicians.
Since 1999, there have been subsequent workshops and they are now
held every year in Seville, Spain.
Said died in 2003, but the West-Eastern Divan Workshop and Orchestra
and the Barenboim-Said Foundation continue to promote music and
co-operation through projects aimed at young Arabs and Israelis.
One such project is the recently released CD with the orchestra,
under Barenboim's direction, performing Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.
5, as well as Verdi's overture for La Forza del Destino and
Sibelius's Valse Triste, Op. 44, No. 1. If you are a fan of these
compositions, then you will enjoy this recording, as the performances
are excellent. To order the CD, visit www.warnermusic.ca/danielbarenboim-west-easterndivanorchestra.
Hear a Jewish legacy
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) is in no particular order
a legendary performer, composer, conductor, teacher and philanthropist,
among other accomplishments. He wrote music for ballets and musicals
as easily as he did for symphonies. Now, the Milken Archive of American
Jewish Music has released some of the compositions Bernstein was
inspired to write because of his Jewish heritage.
Leonard Bernstein: A Jewish Legacy starts a little jarringly
with "Israelite Chorus," a piece that features some brash
horn blasts, but settles down and is very pleasant to listen to.
Bernstein's genius is unmistakable in the piano scores and the range
of his talent is evident in the selections that include opera, piano
solos, Yiddish poems set to music and even a version of "Hashkiveinu,"
a prayer from the Sabbath evening liturgy.
Other than some unevenness in the sound quality, this CD is well
worth adding to any collection. Frankly, if you can afford it, buying
the entire Milken Archive collection would be worthwhile
they plan to release a total of 50 CDs by fall 2006. For more information,
visit either www.milkenarchive.com
or www.naxos.com.
A new immigrant tale
It is hard to rate a musical on the basis of a recording alone,
without having seen it performed on stage. But the Independent
received a copy of The Immigrant, an off-Broadway musical
that apparently received rave reviews during its 2004/2005 run in
New York, as well as for its out-of-city productions.
Based on the play of the same name by Mark Harelik, The Immigrant
tells the story of a Jewish immigrant who flees the pogroms of czarist
Russia in 1909 and arrives in the small Baptist community of Hamilton,
Tex. Given shelter by a older couple, he eventually sends for his
wife and child and they make this town their new home. The musical
touches upon various aspects of the immigrant experience: the strangeness
of a new land, the reaction of the community to new people in their
midst, etc.
Many of the songs are spoken to the music, rather than sung. While
they may progress the plotline, they are not lyrical and no one
would leave the theatre humming any of them. There are a few catchy
melodies, but none that seems particularly new and destined to become
part of the popular culture, like many Cole Porter tunes have, for
example. Perhaps seeing the musical would add to the appreciation
of the music and lyrics, but the CD doesn't stand well on its own.
To purchase The Immigrant, visit www.sh-k-boom.com
or www.ghostlightrecords.com.
Liturgy as performance
Another wonderful release from the Milken Archive of American Jewish
Music is Traditional Cantorial and Concert Favorites. While
"favorites" might be a strange way to describe liturgical
pieces, these arrangements are more performances than they are prayers
but that doesn't mean that they don't inspire. They do.
Cantor Simon Spiro has an impressive tenor voice (less nasal than
the traditional cantorial sound) and he sings with accomplished
choral groups Schola Hebraeica, Coro Hebraeico, New York Cantorial
Choir and Ne'imah Singers and soprano Amy Goldstein. Neil Levin,
who founded a couple of these groups, is artistic director of the
Milken Archive and a professor of music at the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America, conducts.
Many people who grew up in the Conservative movement will recognize
the arrangements of songs like "Ba'avur David" and "Haven
Yakkir Li Efrai'im." All of the pieces will entice vocally
inclined listeners to sing along.
Visit www.milkenarchive.com
or www.naxos.com
for more information and to purchase Traditional Cantorial and
Concert Favorites or other Milken CDs.
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