2003-03-21 Jewish Music Festival
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Festival explores the range of Jewish music San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage, March 21, 2003 |
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2003-03-21 Jewish Music Festival |
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Donald H. Harrison Okay, here's a question that the Center for Jewish Culture wrestles with continually: What makes a painting, a sculpture, a movie, a novel or a piece of nonfiction "Jewish"? And, more particularly, as the "Celebrating Jewish Music" Festival is coming up, when is music "Jewish" and when is it not? Imagine the sound of Jewish music. What do you hear? A cantor singing Kol Nidre? Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof pondering "If I Were A Rich Man"? A break-out clarinet solo during a klezmer performance? The Israeli national anthem Hatikvah? Children singing "I Like Latkes?" A violinist playing "Hebraic Melody?" Yes, Jewish music is all of these. But does the concept expand even beyond these examples? Would it include a Jewish performer playing something from the general repertoire— say, the violinist Jascha Heifetz interpreting a violin concerto by Beethoven? How about music written by a Jew to help celebrate another religion's festivals? Irving Berlin wrote "Easter Parade" and "White Christmas." Berlin was Jewish, so are even these songs, then, examples of Jewish music? Such are the types of questions that a committee headed by Roselyn Pappelbaum routinely bats back and forth as it puts together Jewish musical events like the upcoming Fourth Annual "Celebrating Jewish Music" Festival. The celebrating gets under way this Monday night with a concert by the Andy Statman Trio titled "From Ukraine to Nashville." Heritage's music critic, Eileen Wingard, was a member of the committee that planned the festival. She told her colleagues on this newspaper that, as Statman's trio plays klezmer music, "the folk music of the Jewish people," his March 24 concert clearly falls within the scope of a Jewish music festival. Similarly, Wingard said, the March 31 concert by her sister, Zina Schiff, in salute to the virtuoso violinist Jascha Heifetz also clearly qualifies. Not only are both Heifetz and Schiff Jewish, but almost the entire program includes the works of Jewish composers who drew upon Jewish musical sources. Schiff also will perform a piece taught to her by Heifetz from the general repertoire: Johannnes Brahms' Sonata No. 3 in D Minor. "That was one of Heifetz¹s favorite pieces," Wingard said. "In his classical recitals, in his playing, he didn't relegate himself just to Jewish composers." In celebrating Jewish music, evidently, we may take note of how Jewish performers interpret works by non-Jewish composers. Three companion events have been programmed by the Center for Jewish Culture to further enrich people's appreciation for Heifetz's remarkable career: • From March 31 through April 20, excluding Saturdays and Passover, the Lawrence Family JCC will host an exhibit of Heifetz memorabilia assembled by the Hollywood Bowl Museum and the Colburn School of Performing Arts. • On Tuesday, April 8, at 7 p.m., in the JCC¹s Astor Judaica Library, Wingard will moderate a panel discussion on Heifetz featuring Schiff, Athenaeum music director Geoffrey Brooks, and Eric Bromberger, a music historian and lecturer. • On Thursday, April 10, also at 7 p.m. in the Astor Judaica Library, They Shall Have Music, a movie starring Heifetz, will be screened. Meanwhile, from April 3 through April 6, the Center for Jewish Culture will host the West Coast premiere of a new stage musical, Suddenly Hope, which follows an American Jewish actress to Israel on a search for her missing sister. Not only is the musical's theme Jewish, so too are its composers, Morris Bernstein and Kyle Rosen, as well as its producers, siblings Mitchell and Victoria Maxwell. The musical, according to Mitchell Maxwell, "offers an optimistic message while it challenges us to see that the crisis in the Middle East is deeply personal and that Israel is the soul of the Jewish people." On April 6, the festival moves off the Jacobs Family Campus of the Lawrence Family JCC to Segerstrom Hall in the Orange County Performing Arts Center, where Cantors David Propis, Alberto Mizrahi and David Katz— styling themselves as The Three Jewish Tenors — present a concert in conjunction with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. The Orange County Jewish Community Center is sponsoring the event, and this marks a formal collaboration between the two JCCs. A $118 package includes the concert, a pre-concert dinner and round-trip motor coach transportation from San Diego. On April 13 at 4 p.m., the San Diego Civic Youth Orchestra will present a concert with Jewish musical themes at the Lawrence Family JCC. The orchestra's conductor, Robert Gilson, is a member of the Jewish community. One assumes that most of the musicians are not Jewish, but the theme and the conductor combine to fit under the "Jewish music" umbrella. Similarly, at 8 p.m. on Saturday, May 17, at Copley Symphony Hall, conductor Murry Sidlin will lead the San Diego Symphony in a tribute to another great Jewish-American conductor, Leonard Bernstein. So there it is, the Fourth Annual "Celebrating Jewish Music" Festival, with each offering having a Jewish component, and the concept of "Jewish music" proving to be a somewhat expansive one. Not only Jews will be attracted to the festival, said Wingard. "We feel that music has a universality that touches everyone's hearts." While pleased with this year's offerings, Wingard and Jackie Semha Gmach,
associate executive director of the Center for Jewish Culture, say plans
already are being made to expand the festival in coming years. |
