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December 19, 2003
Best of Jewish American music
The Milken Archive and Naxo will release 50 CDs over a two-year
period.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Thirteen years in the making. More than 600 newly recorded works,
representing more than 200 composers, more than 250 performing artists
and covering 350 years of American Jewish music history. This is
the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music. And you can own (or
give) it all.
While most people have heard of Jewish composers such as Aaron Copland,
Kurt Weill and Leonard Bernstein, there exists a large repertoire
of music specifically related to American Jewish experiences that
remains relatively unknown. This is why Lowell Milken, chairman
and co-founder of the Milken Family Foundation, established the
Milken Archive project in 1990. He wanted to record and preserve
this repertoire, and make it accessible to the public, accompanied
by information about the origins and traditions of American Jewish
music.
The project's first releases were in September 2003 and the entire
archive collection is being released over a two-year period, in
association with the Naxos American Classics series. It is planned
that there will be 50 CDs produced by 2005.
Three recordings were just issued in November, including the seasonally
appropriate A Hannuka Celebration, which comprises Chanukah
songs from many parts of the world, along with music composed in
America. There is "Hannerot Hallalu" by Hugo Adler (1894-1955),
"Ma'oz Tzur" by Aaron Miller (1911-2000), "Di Khanike
Likht" by Zavel Zilberts (1881-1949) and "Hanukka Madrigal
(Mi y'mallel?)" by Herbert Fromm (1905-1995), as well as many
other traditional songs in unique settings. Performers include Cantor
Benzion Miller, Cantor Simon Spiro, Coro Hebraeico, Carolina Chamber
Chorale, New London's Children's Choir and others.
Also released in November were Jewish Voices in the New World
and Service Sacré.
Jewish Voices in the New World is a collection of synagogue
melodies and biblical chants as they were sung in the early American
colonial period. When the first practising Jews arrived in North
America, in the 17th century, they brought with them the Sephardi
musical tradition that flourished in "New Amsterdam" (New
York). Cantor Ira Rohde and Schola Hebraeica, conducted by Neil
Levin, perform on this recording of sacred music, some of which
still forms part of the services in America's oldest synagogues:
Shearith Israel, established in 1654, and Mikve Israel, founded
in 1782.
Service Sacré presents a Shabbat service by composer
Darius Milhaud (1892-1974). It includes the settings for the Friday
evening liturgy, which were written after the work's commission
and première at Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco in 1947.
Performers on the CD are baritone Yaron Windmueller, reader Rabbi
Rodney Mariner, the Prague Philharmonic Chorus, the Czech Philharmonic
Orchestra and conductor Gerard Schwarz.
In addition to the CDs, the Milken Archive holds events, such as
the recent conference entitled Only in America: Jewish Music in
a Land of Freedom. Composers, performers and music scholars got
together in New York, Nov. 7-11, for this international conference
and festival on music of the American Jewish experience. It was
presented by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) and
the Milken Archive, and it marked the beginning of a year-long commemoration
at the JTS of the 350th anniversary of American Jewry.
There were interactive workshops, academic presentations, world-première
concerts and the reenactment of a colonial-era Sabbath service.
Only in America featured more than 60 speakers and 45 performing
artists, all experts in American Jewish music, discussing and performing
liturgical and concert music by more than 50 composers. In one concert,
Choir of a Thousand Voices, Samuel Adler conducted leading cantors
and soloists in an open sing with choral participation by the congregation
at New York's Congregation B'nai Jeshurun. Highlights from Weill's
The Eternal Road featured the Chamber Sinfonia of the Manhattan
School of Music conducted by Schwarz. And a memorial tribute to
Cantor Richard Tucker featured a tribute by actor Tony Randall,
performances of classic and modern cantorial and Yiddish music,
other virutoso performances and world premières of works
by Ofer Ben-Amots, Spiro and Adler.
There are no CDs being released this month, but there will be two
in January: The Gates of Justice and Ladino Songs of Love
and Suffering.
The first is by jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck, who wrote
this cantata in an attempt to heal the rift between the Jewish people
and American blacks that emerged after the assassination of Martin
Luther King, Jr., in 1968. It was based on biblical and Hebrew liturgical
texts, together with quotations from King's speeches, the Jewish
sage Hillel and lyrics by Brubeck's wife, Iola. It was intended
to underscore the spiritual parallels between Jews and blacks. The
music on the archive CD is performed by the Dave Brubeck Trio, Kevin
Deas (baritone), Cantor Alberto Mizrahi (tenor) and the Baltimore
Choral Arts Society, conducted by Russell Gloyd.
Ladino Songs by Bruce Adolphe is composed for soprano, guitar
and French horn, and is based on folk poetry in Ladino, the
Castillian Spanish/Hebrew vernacular of Mediterranean Sephardi Jews
that dates from the time of the Spanish expulsion in 1492. This
CD also includes a complete scene from Adolphe's opera Mikhoels
the Wise, which deals with the life and murder of the most prominent
figure of the post-revolution Soviet Yiddish theatre and spokesman
for Soviet Jewry, Solomon Mikhoels, and the six-movement cantata
Out of the Whirlwind, which is based on Yiddish poems and
songs written by members of the Jewish resistance in the ghettos
during the Second World War, as well as by other victims of the
Holocaust.
The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music has a comprehensive
Web site. At www.milkenarchive.org,
browsers can read feature articles on the project's music, composers
and performers; keep up-to-date on the project's progress; and listen
to some of the musical offerings. The site also links visitors to
where they can purchase the recordings for $6.98 US each (not including
shipping). Have your credit card close by.
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