Music

Keeping sacred songs alive

Ida Halpern, right, with Chief Harry and Ida Assu in Cape Mudge, 1979. Chief Assu was the son of Chief Billy Assu. (Image J-00562 courtesy Royal B.C. Museum and Archives)

In 1947, ethnomusicologist Dr. Ida Halpern and hereditary Kwakwaka’wakw chiefs Billy Assu and Mungo Martin, among others, began a decades-long collaboration. They recorded more than 300 sacred and traditional songs that otherwise would have been lost because of the Potlatch Ban and the suppression of Indigenous culture in general. The exhibit Keeping the Song Alive explores these preservation efforts and highlights how these songs are inspiring Indigenous artists today.

Co-developed by the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art and the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia, Keeping the Song Alive is at the Bill Reid Gallery until March 19. The exhibit is co-curated by Michael Schwartz, former director of community engagement with the Jewish Museum, and Bill Reid Gallery’s Cheryl Kaka’solas Wadhams, a practising artist who also is an active member of the local Kwakwaka’wakw Cultural Sharing Group and a participant in the Kwak’wala language program through the First Nations Endangered Language Program at the University of British Columbia.

photo - Ida Halpern with her audio recorder, circa 1960 — Ida Halpern with her audio recorder, circa 1960. (Courtesy Royal B.C. Museum and Archives)

“I first learned about Ida Halpern at a B.C. Museums conference in Victoria in 2017,” Schwartz told theIndependent. “My colleagues at the B.C. Archives shared the news that they had recently submitted the Ida Halpern Collection to be considered for inclusion in the Canadian UNESCO Memory of the World register. The collection was inscribed in the register in March of the following year but, at that conference, I was inspired by the story of Ida Halpern and thought it would be an excellent topic for an exhibit or project by the JMABC.

“A few months later, I ran into [curator] Beth Carter from the Bill Reid Gallery and we agreed to collaborate on the exhibit. Doing so would expand the possibilities and improve the final project, which definitely turned out to be true. Shortly thereafter, we brought in Cheryl Wadhams, who brought lived experience and essential connections as a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw community.”

A 2020 grant from the B.C. Arts Council made it possible for Schwartz and his colleagues to visit the Kwakwaka’wakw communities in Alert Bay, in Campbell River and on Mudge Island. They did so in early summer of this year.

“The impact is still revealing itself,” said Wadhams of guest curating the exhibit. “In general, it is causing me to think more deeply about my relationship with my community. Our research helped me to reconnect with community leaders back home in Alert Bay. Living in the city, this is so important to me.”

In addition to the historical elements, Keeping the Song Alive includes contemporary art, artist talks, Kwakwaka’wakw dance and drum group performances, and more.

“We were honoured to receive permission from the families to share certain songs,” said Wadhams. “All of the artists in the show are directly speaking to the recordings, the Potlatch Ban, or the contemporary flourishing of Kwakwaka’wakw potlatches. Barb Cranmer is an influential filmmaker whose important films are all based on our culture.

“We first approached Sonny Assu as the great-great-grandson of Chief Billy Assu,” she said. “He has explored the ideas behind these recordings for several years and created a new work for the exhibition. Andy Everson is also sharing a personal family story in his work. Maxine Matilpi supports the community with her beautiful regalia and her deep cultural knowledge.”

Several Kwakwaka’wakw community members and cultural leaders are featured in the exhibition, said Wadhams. “They speak directly to the value of the recordings and their meaning for the community. They are the leaders of today who are teaching our youth for the future.”

photo - Chief Mungo Martin restoring totem poles, 1949 — Chief Mungo Martin restoring totem poles, 1949. *(UBC Archives Photograph Collection)*

“At a time when historic injustices are in the spotlight and racial tensions and hate crimes are high, stories of cross-cultural collaboration can soothe and provide inspiration,” said Schwartz, who described the exhibit as a “capstone” to his time at the Jewish Museum. (He recently became a director of development at Ballet BC.) “The JMABC’s last physical exhibit was in 2015, Fred Schiffer: Lives in Photos. Eight years later, it’s nice to produce another one,” he said.

In an interview with the CBC in 1967, which can be found on the Royal B.C. Museum website, Halpern describes the preservation of these local Indigenous songs as a project close to her heart.

“Some have suggested that Ida’s experience fleeing the Holocaust informed her work, and that this experience may have given the chiefs confidence in trusting her. But it’s difficult to know for certain,” said Schwartz. “It is apparent in her writing that she felt other academics had misrepresented and oversimplified this musical tradition and she sought to remedy this perceived wrong.”

Ida and Georg Halpern fled Vienna shortly after Kristallnacht and, by way of Shanghai, made their way to Vancouver, said Schwartz. “Ida had been a promising pianist as a teenager and intended to pursue a career as a performer, but a spell of rheumatic fever landed her in the hospital for a year, making her practise and training impossible. Her health restored, she studied musicology at the University of Vienna during a time when the field was flourishing and some of the best minds in the discipline were teaching there. It was a transformative time for her.

“Arriving in Vancouver, Ida set out to record and analyze the song traditions of local Indigenous nations,” he said. “She spent close to a decade building trust and often spoke of all the time she spent in kitchens, helping the women prepare food for community events. These efforts paid off when she was invited by Chief Billy Assu to record him singing 100 songs at his home in Cape Mudge.

“Over the course of a week, the two recorded 88 songs, complete with explanations of the history, meaning and significance of each song, when it was to be sung and by whom. This encounter was the initial spark for Ida’s research. Assu was a widely respected leader and his endorsement opened the doors for her to meet with other Indigenous leaders, including Mungo Martin and Tom Willie.

“Selections from these recordings were later published through Smithsonian Folkways Records, through the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, giving them an audience far beyond the academic community. Many of the people we worked with in developing this exhibit spoke to the importance of these records and the fact that they were many people’s first encounter with their own tradition.”

Hereditary Chief K’odi Nelson was one of the people the research group met in Alert Bay, said Schwartz. “He’s an extremely kind and welcoming person, who told us about the classes his mother and aunties started to teach the children the old songs. In the early days, they couldn’t persuade any of the elders to come sing in person, so his mom swiped a copy of one of the Folkways records from the band office. K’odi had a visceral memory of being about 5 years old and hearing the needle drop as he waited behind the curtain to start dancing.”

image - Kwakiutl: Indian Music of the Pacific Northwest record cover — Kwakiutl: Indian Music of the Pacific Northwest was published in 1981 by Folkways Records.

It is important to note that Halpern and the chiefs’ recordings were made during the Potlatch Ban, Schwartz said. The ban came into effect in 1885 and was in place until 1951.

“By working with Halpern, the chiefs were breaking the law and putting themselves at risk,” he said, “but they saw the necessity to do so. Their children were distancing themselves from their cultural tradition and showing a lack of interest in learning the old ways. Members of the community felt it was safer to assimilate and blend into the dominant society. The chiefs feared that their tradition would die with them; by recording with Halpern, they were essentially crafting a time capsule, making it possible for a future generation to reconnect with the tradition, which we’re seeing happen now and over the past decade.”

Schwartz was quick to point out that the recordings weren’t the only way that the traditions were kept alive during the Potlatch Ban.

“Kwakwaka’wakw leaders violated the ban or navigated tightly around the edges of it in various ways, including by holding gatherings under the guise of Christmas or Thanksgiving dinners,” he explained. “While technically not a potlatch, they were opportunities to undertake the ‘business’ of the potlatch: namings, agreements, honours and so forth.

“These creative solutions in the face of attempted erasure brought to mind for me the story of Hanukkah,” said Schwartz, “How the dreidel was used as a mask for study groups, and the old adage that an idea can’t be killed.”

About the importance of keeping these songs alive, Wadhams said, “Speaking to the singers in the Urban Dance Group, and also back home, I have learned that they find them so valuable. They have them on their phones and listen on YouTube, Spotify, all the time. Living in the city, I started my journey 25 years ago to learn the songs and dances. Having access to these songs really made it possible for me to connect in a new way with my ancestry.”

To watch the Nov. 2 opening celebration of the exhibit and for more information, visit billreidgallery.ca.

Old Stock returns by popular demand

Ben Caplan stars in Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, which opens at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Dec. 1. (Stoo Metz Photography)

Ben Caplan is narrator and co-creator (with Christian Barry and Hannah Moscovitch) of Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, which opens at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Dec. 1. It is a fantastic show, well worth seeing, which was last in Vancouver for the 2020 PuSh Festival.

“The show hasn’t changed all that much,” said Barry, artistic director of Halifax’s 2b theatre company. “We have a brilliant new drummer and keyboardist working on the show and, on top of that, the team has more skill and experience just by virtue of having had more opportunities to refine our show through repetition. But, ultimately, the reason we are bringing [it] back to Vancouver is all about access. In January 2020, we were only able to perform six times at UBC as part of the PuSh Festival. It was a lovely run with full houses and boisterous responses, but we think there were many people who just didn’t have the chance to see the show. We were thrilled to receive an invitation from SFU to bring the show back, and to perform in downtown Vancouver.”

To read more about the music-theatre performance, visit jewishindependent.ca/searching-for-a-safe-harbour. For tickets, go to eventbrite.com.

Reimagining together

A scene from Site: Yizkor as it was performed in Sichów Duży, Poland, this past June. (photo from Chutzpah!)

Site: Yizkor is both an intensely personal work and a powerful, universally meaningful work. It is ever-changing and spans the past, present and future.

“For me, this project is a gesture of healing,” co-creator Maya Ciarrocchi told the Independent. “My goal for audiences and participants is that, through the process of shared commemoration, we may put aside our differences and look towards a reimagined future.”

Part of this year’s Chutzpah! Festival, Site: Yizkor is a collaboration between Canadian multimedia artist Ciarrocchi and American composer Andrew Conklin. It is an evolving “interdisciplinary project [that] explores the physical and emotional manifestation of loss through text, video and music.” It is an installation (of video, prints and drawings) and a performance, and includes workshops “where participants are invited to create their own Yizkor pages as a way to mourn and commemorate lost people and places.”

“Yizkor books are documents written by Holocaust survivors to commemorate the villages they lived in before the Second World War,” explained Ciarrocchi. “They capture the spirit of these places by describing the day-to-day life of their Jewish citizens. They include lists of the Jewish residents, the structure of political systems and where the best shopping could be found. They also include photographs and maps of the villages drawn from memory. They document a time and place that no longer exist but the traces of which are visible in the contemporary landscape.”

In introducing the project to workshop participants, Ciarrocchi said, “I tell them that, while Site: Yizkorexamines displacement through the lens of Yizkor, which is an inherently Jewish framework, the project is not limited to the Jewish experience. Site: Yizkor is centred on creating a space for shared commemoration and the universal experience of loss.”

photo - Maya Ciarrocchi — Maya Ciarrocchi *(photo © Joanna Eldredge Morrissey)*

For the local presentation, Conklin works with a local string quartet for the performance, while Ciarrocchi creates “video projections for the performance that include references to the known and erased histories of Vancouver,” and installs the exhibit in the gallery. She leads the workshops, which include both Jewish and non-Jewish community groups, and participants “are invited to read their text as part of the performances or share them as written documents or drawings as part of the exhibition.”

Site: Yizkor has been presented in New York City and in San Francisco. In June of this year, it was presented in Poland, from where Ciarrocchi’s maternal grandfather immigrated to Canada; Ciarrocchi was born in Winnipeg.

The project began in 2018, when Ciarrocchi was a fellow in the Laboratory for Jewish Culture program in New York City. “At the time,” she said, “I was working on a series of drawings depicting former Polish and Lithuanian wooden synagogues layered with memory maps sourced from Yizkor books. As part of the project, I gave a performance lecture where I read passages from Yizkor books, accompanied by projections of my drawings, maps and photographs from Yizkor books. I concluded the performance by prompting the audience to ‘describe a vanished place of personal importance.’ I collected these texts, and they were incorporated into future performances.”

Andrew Conklin (photo from Chutzpah!)

She met Conklin around when she was in residency at Millay Arts in upstate New York. “He expressed interest in using my drawings of maps as a musical score,” she said. “We then started working on a sound/video project comprising his compositions and my animated maps and drawings.”

In 2019, Ciarrocchi was invited to attend an international meeting of interdisciplinary artists in Poland.

“The group gathered in Sichów Duży, a rural area not far from Staszów, a small town that was once an important centre of Jewish life,” said Ciarrocchi. “The site once belonged to an aristocratic family who lost their lands and titles during the Second World War. The buildings had been restored except for one and, one evening, I projected the video on its surface and played Andrew’s music from speakers inside. It was then I knew that I needed to return to this place and present the work live with musicians inside the structure. In June 2022, after three years, a pandemic and a war, I returned to Sichów with a team of musicians from the U.S., Germany and Poland. We presented Site: Yizkor inside the ruin to an audience comprised of Ukrainian refugees who were being housed on the site. The following week, we presented Site: Yizkor in another ruined manor home outside of Kraków. That iteration included dancers as well as musicians.”

It was an emotional experience.

“Gratitude and relief,” said Ciarrocchi about what she felt afterward. “Gratitude to Andrew and the incredible team of performers we assembled and to the funders who supported the work. Relief after all the planning and delays that we were finally able to bring the work to Poland. It was also exciting to see the project come together so beautifully. In many ways, my first research trip in 2019 was where I felt all the sadness and grief. This year, I was too busy to let myself go into the dark crevasses of my emotions. In 2019, though, I spent most of the three weeks I was there crying. I visited my grandmother’s shtetl, which was incredibly powerful. While sitting on the ground in the old Jewish cemetery there, I released all my grief. Poland is filled with ghosts. One does not help but feel their presence.”

It is in this context that the question asking workshop participants to “describe their dreams of the future” was added to the project.

“I added this part of the prompt in Poland,” said Ciarrocchi. “I realized that, understandably, so much of the Jewish experience there is about memory and the past. I’m two generations removed from the Holocaust and, while its effects are written into the code of my body, I am also interested in how we create something new from the residue of this loss. This also comes from these past years of the pandemic, when there has been such a huge loss of life. We’ve had to reimagine how we live now and in the future.”

The performance and exhibition of Site: Yizkor in Vancouver is the Canadian première of the work.

For a recent grant proposal, Ciarrocchi wrote about the première, “This event will also be a coming home. Site: Yizkor is rooted in research into the land and architecture of a place in relation to the known and mythological histories of my ancestors who fled Poland and Lithuania before the Second World War. My ancestors emigrated to Canada to form a new life for themselves and their descendants. On the surface, their story is one of success. My great-grandfather was a seminal figure in Winnipeg’s garment industry, and my family still benefits from his accomplishments. This story belies how the effects of trauma and displacement have persisted from their origins in Eastern Europe so many decades ago. Forming cross-cultural connections through Site: Yizkor’s performance and workshop model, first in Poland and now in Canada, irrigates ancient inherited wounds.”

Site: Yizkor is co-presented with the Zack Gallery and in partnership with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, with the support of the Jewish Community Foundation. The performance takes place Nov. 19, 8 p.m., at the Rothstein Theatre, and it will livestreamed and available on demand; it will include a facilitated talkback and a reception with the artists. The exhibition and workshops take place Nov. 12-19 in the gallery. For tickets and more information, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

Reviving Jewish roots

JunkOy! recently released their new 10-track album, Once Upon a Time in Odessa.

It has been busy fall for Vancouver-based ensemble JunkOy!, culminating with the promotion of a 10-track album, Once Upon a Time in Odessa. At the same time, the band is preparing a live video, getting ready for some in-person gigs and recording a second album.

JunkOy!’s repertoire is a mix of klezmer interspersed with a number of other musical genres, including jazz, ska, tango, waltz and rock and roll.

“Our songs are old Soviet chestnuts, which were written by Jews in the early 1900s but appropriated by the Soviet culture. Almost all early Soviet music was written by Jews who grew up with Yiddish and klezmer music,” said Stav Au-Dag, the group’s frontperson. The songs were translated into English by Au-Dag and reworked to eliminate the Soviet influences in the lyrics. All of JunkOy!’s songs can be performed in either English or Russian.

“The idea for this project is simple: to take Jewish music from its Soviet orchestral captivity back to its klezmer Jewish roots,” Au-Dag explained. “And a dash of Gypsy jazz and ska never hurt anyone, either.”

In addition to removing the references to the Soviet regime, Au-Dag said he and the band rearranged the songs in a more traditional klezmer style – “clarinet, violin, accordion and bass plus acoustic guitar, instead of the stuffy big Soviet orchestral music they were recorded in,” he said. “Thus, the songs are democratized and shown to be belonging to folk tradition, in which everyone could participate, rather than a part of an institutionalized culture, attainable only to the highly educated musicians and rich concert-goers.”

Many of the tracks on Once Upon a Time in Odessa draw upon the connections between early Soviet pop culture and its Jewish roots.

Two songs on the new album come from the first Soviet musical, Jolly Fellows (1934): “March of the Cheerful Pilgrims” and “Young Heart.” Both songs have postmodern lyrical contributions from Au-Dag, who added a third verse to the march and dispensed with all references to the joys of Soviet labour, while a second verse was added to “Young Heart.” Musically, Au-Dag said, “Young Heart” benefited from “Ikh Hob Dikh Tsufil Lib” (“I Love You Too Much”) by Alexander Olshanetsky and Chaim Tauber.

The song “Uncle Eli” is taken from “Der Rebbe Elimelech,” penned by Moyshe Nadir. Au-Dag said Nadir’s song is based on the British nursery rhyme “Old King Cole.” In the USSR, the song received assistance from two Jews: it was translated by Elizabeth Polonsky and Joseph Pustylnik added the instrumental part. Au-Dag has augmented the lyrics and written new choruses.

The origins of the tune “Lime-Lemons” are found in 1920s Odessa. Leib Zingerthal sang the lyrics by Yakov Yadov. Au-Dag pointed out that the popular number dealt with the lawlessness that occurred in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War, when hyperinflation turned a person’s fortune into worthless “lemons.”

The album includes a version of “Steamship,” premièred by singer and comic actor Leonid Utyosov in 1940, and considered by some to be the first video clip in the world. The song was written for the big screen by composer Nikolai Minkh.

Two songs on this album originate in Jewish Poland. “Samovar,” with music by a teenaged Fanny Gordon (born Fayge Yoffe) and lyrics by Andrzej Włast (born Gustaw Baumritter), was written in 1929 and has a long, convoluted history. First popular in Poland, then in Lithuania, it was appropriated by Leonid Utyosov in 1933, without credit to its authors. Au-Dag said Yoffe was so scared of Utyosov, she did not claim her authorship until 1979 – when she received 12 rubles. Au-Dag has expanded the original Russian one-verse version and shifted the story to Crimea, where Gordon was born.

“Tired Sun,” meanwhile, was written by a Jewish duo, poet Zenon Friedwald and composer Jerzy Peterburgsky, in 1937. Au-Dag has added the second part to the song.

The name JunkOy! (or JunkOye!), translated as the Village of the Spirit, is derived from a community at the centre of the Jewish agricultural settlement in Crimea (1925-1941). The group consists of five musicians on stage: Au-Dag, vocals and acoustic guitar; Serge Galois, double bass; Ben McRae, clarinet; Paul Krakauer, accordion; and Masha PinkCod, vocals and violin.

Founded in Montreal in 2014, JunkOy! has been operating out of Vancouver since 2015; its members met originally through Facebook and various musical friends. They hail from throughout the globe: Crimea (Au-Dag), France and Russia (Galois), Canada (McRae), Poland (Krakauer) and Moscow (PinkCod).

To get a taste of JunkOy!’s music, venture over to YouTube and the Magical Crimea channel. There, one can find the rousing performance they gave earlier in the year at Or Shalom, where they raised money for Jewish Family Services to settle Ukrainian refugees in British Columbia.

To purchase Once Upon a Time in Odessa, send an email to [email protected].

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Instilling a love of the arts

Merewyn Comeau and Raes Calvert in Th’owxiya: The Hungry Feast Dish, which is on the Chutzpah! stage Nov. 18-19. (photo by Javier Sotres)

For the first time, the Chutzpah! Festival, which was launched in 2001, is presenting programming specifically targeted to young people, families and educators. Dan and Claudia Zanes will be live in concert Nov. 13-14 and Joseph A. Dandurand’s Th’owxiya: The Hungry Feast Dish will be presented by Axis Theatre Nov. 18-19. Both events take place at the Rothstein Theatre.

“One of my first strategic goals when I joined Chutzpah! was to launch a programming stream for young people and families,” said Jessica Gutteridge, managing artistic director of the festival since 2020. “I have a background in theatre for young audiences, and this is an area of performing arts that I find very rich and interesting…. I think the best way to keep the performing arts vibrant into the future is to share exciting and stimulating arts experiences with young people so that they can grow into the audiences of tomorrow. And finding ways of sharing these experiences across generations makes for wonderful bonding between kids and their parents, grandparents, caregivers and mentors, but also gives the adults in the audience a memorable and enjoyable experience. I’m also a passionate proponent of arts education, so finding opportunities for teachers to bring performing arts into their teaching is meaningful to me.”

photo - Dan and Claudia Zanes will be live in concert Nov. 13-14 — Dan and Claudia Zanes will be live in concert Nov. 13-14. (photo by Xavier Plater)

Dan Zanes is a Grammy award-winning children’s performer and Claudia Zanes is a music therapist/jazz vocalist. The couple has been “making music with each other since the day they met in the fall of 2016.” Their Nov. 14 performance is for schools and the Nov. 13 show is open for all.

“Dan Zanes, to put it bluntly, was a key reason I survived the music playing in my children’s rooms when I had young kids,” said Gutteridge about her choice of performers for this program. “I think he’s just a spectacular musician and storyteller that all ages can enjoy, and his partnership with Claudia Zanes makes even more gorgeous and meaningful music. I appreciate that Dan and Claudia are committed to making their performances sensory-friendly and accessible, and in sharing messages of love, solidarity and social justice, that are timely and important.”

As with the concert, the Nov. 18 production of Th’owxiya is for schools and the Nov. 19 show welcomes everyone, with the caveat that the ogress might be scary to some young children. The play, recommended for ages 5 and up, recounts a Kwantlen First Nations tale, “the legend of the basket ogress, Th’owxiya, an old hungry spirit that inhabits a feast dish full of bountiful delicious foods, and sly Mouse (Kw’at’el), who is caught stealing cheese from this feast dish. To appease an angry Th’owxiya, Kw’at’el embarks on a journey to find two children for the ogress to eat, or else!” The work features “traditional Coast Salish and Sto:lo music, masks and imagery” and audiences will learn “how Raven (Sqeweqs), Bear (Spa:th) and Sasquatch (Sasq’ets) trick a hungry spirit and save Kw’at’el and their family from becoming the feast.”

Both the concert and the play run about an hour, and all performances take place at 11 a.m.

While the concert and play are two programs specifically aimed at young audiences, Gutteridge said many of the Chutzpah! performances “are appropriate for general audiences, and we hope that youth and teens in particular will join us for some of them. For example, Persian Jewish Cooking with Ayelet Latovich, Music at the Centre of the River, and the Joan Beckow Legacy Project – which will feature youth performers from Perry Ehrlich’s Showstoppers – are all programs that all ages can enjoy together. Programs like Jacqueline Saper’s presentation of her memoir of growing up Jewish in Tehran and the Site: Yizkor project may offer teens engaging ways of learning and contextualizing current events and history.”

In a similar vein, Gutteridge added, “Adults should feel just as welcome as kids to come and enjoy these shows – truly these are experiences that are relevant and enjoyable for all ages. If any families who would wish to join us for these events feel that their financial situation does not permit them to attend, please contact our box office. We have an allocation of tickets set aside so that cost is not a barrier to sharing these experiences with young people.”

For the full Chutzpah! lineup and tickets, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

VRS hosts Schiff, Rondeau

As part of the Vancouver Recital Society’s fall programming, both pianist Sir András Schiff (above), and harpsichordist Jean Rondeau will perform J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

The Vancouver Recital Society’s season opened last month with the Canadian debut of Italian pianist Filippo Gorini. It continues Oct. 16 with Steven Isserlis (cello) and Connie Shih (piano), and Oct. 18 and 20 with pianist Sir András Schiff.

Rounding out the fall program, Turkish cellist Jamal Aliyev makes his Canadian debut with Turkish pianist Fazil Say on Oct. 30, Jean Rondeau (harpsichord) plays on Nov. 6, and American violinist Randall Goosby and Chinese pianist Zhu Wang perform together on Nov. 27.

Sir András was scheduled to fly to Vancouver in March 2020 to help VRS celebrate its 40th anniversary. Instead, he was detained in Japan as the world went into lockdown due to COVID-19. His Oct. 18, 7:30 p.m., performance at the Vancouver Playhouse will be special – Sir András will announce and discuss what he is going to play from the stage. On Oct. 20, 7:30 p.m., at the Orpheum Theatre, he will perform the Goldberg Variations. Originally written for harpsichord, J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations were first published in 1741 and are named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may have been the first performer of the work.

Sir András’s Oct. 20 performance is a benefit concert. It will help the VRS set the stage for its next big milestone – its 50th anniversary season in 2030. In addition to the Variations, Sir András will play Bach’s Italian Concerto in F major and Bach’s Overture in French Style in B minor.

photo - Jean Rondeau will perform at Beth Israel Nov. 6 — Jean Rondeau will perform at Beth Israel Nov. 6. *(PR photo)*

Rondeau also will perform the Goldberg Variations – his Nov. 6, 3 p.m., concert, will take place at Congregation Beth Israel.

“An ode to silence” is how Rondeau has described the Variations. “I feel they were written for silence, in the sense that they take the place of silence,” he says. “All Bach is there in the Goldberg Variations … all music is there … and I will no doubt spend my life working on them.”

For tickets and more information, visit vanrecital.com.

– From vanrecital.com

Multicultural experience – new music releases offer unique rhythms and stories

Yoni Avi Battat (photo by Richard Ijeh)

On Sept. 2, multi-instrumentalist, singer and composer Yoni Avi Battat released his debut album, Fragments, a collection of original and traditional music surrounding his Iraqi-Jewish identity. With lyrics in Arabic, Hebrew, English and Yiddish, the music uses Arabic modes and rhythms with an ensemble of traditional Arabic instruments to make sense of the artist’s fragmented identity.

“Growing up in an American Jewish community dominated by European culture, I had very little access to the music, language and traditions of my Iraqi-Jewish ancestors,” said Battat. “As an adult, I’ve had to make a concerted effort to learn Arabic music and language in order to represent my Arab-Jewish ancestry as a musician. Studying these musical traditions has connected me deeply with my roots, but there are still so many parts of my family’s experience about which I will never know. I can no longer ask my grandparents about their life in Baghdad or their departure from Iraq. I can’t visit the land where my ancestors lived for thousands of years.”

Battat dove into scholarship of Jewish Arabic poetry, researching translations and tracking down rare editions of Arabic books. In doing so, he was able to source the Arabic texts that helped him begin to answer his questions. By pairing these words with existing and original lyrics in other languages, and setting them to Arabic musical modes, Battat envisioned his own method to make sense of fragmented identity.

“As you experience these original and traditional pieces, I invite you to approach memory in a new way – not through exact facts, dates and photos but through your senses and your imagination,” he said. “Allow these smells, textures, tastes and sounds to transport you to a place and time you have never been. When we cannot access the specific details of our families’ stories, our imagination can still bring us a real and intimate connection with where we come from.”

Battat’s great-uncle, Razi, is his only remaining direct connection to the generation that was born in Iraq. Battat has been lucky to hear him sing at the tiny synagogue in Jerusalem where he’s been praying for decades. On the track “El Eliyahu,” a traditional Iraqi melody, the timbre of Razi’s voice offers a lens into a different time and place.

Another song, “Will Her Love Remember?” brings to life a Hebrew poem from the 10th century, one of the only remaining examples of poetry from this era thought to be written by a woman. The wistful melody and carefully metred lines show us how physical objects can be imbued with memory and allow us to hold our loved ones close, even when they are so far away.

Yet another relatable piece, “What Would You Say?” recounts the artist’s attempts to recreate his grandmother’s cooking and his struggle to get it just right. The chorus comforts any home cook with imagined advice and affirmation from Battat’s grandmother, Violet: “Take it slow. Take it easy. Trust your hands.”

For more on Iand Battat, visit yonibattat.com.

* * *

photo - Tamar Eisenman — Tamar Eisenman *(photo from eisenwoman.com)*

At the start of this year, Tamar Eisenman released Rain & Dirt, which includes 11 new tracks recorded in New York City, Shanghai and Tel Aviv, bringing together a multicultural musical experience from a guitarist’s perspective. Songs on this album observe the nexus between the life you’ve planned and the life you’re living. The main prism revisits the story and feeling of someone traveling between countries, trying to build a home and start a family.

A trio session with longtime friends, musicians Rea Mochiach and Yonatan Levy, produced an alternative wrap of musical textures, combining blues, rock, jazz and muddy funk. The trio were joined on some tracks by Yoed Nir on cello, pianist Chano Dominguez and saxophonist Amit Friedman.

The musical approach emphasizes the feeling and concept of living in a constant gap between languages, homes and cultures. This led to a real-time recording of events in the studio. Long jams created the rebirth of songs and paved the arrangements, as a reflection to all those plans you made that changed along the way and created new realizations.

“It’s a bit strange releasing an album that was ready and completed almost two years ago,” said Eisenman. “But, we all know what happened in the past two years, that obviously reflected this process. On normal days, I would have used all that ‘quiet time’ and lockdown state of mind to create and record. As New York City was shutting down, by the end of March, I had a baby – my first. I did not expect this would be my maternal experience; I couldn’t imagine this in my wildest dreams.”

For more information, visit the website eisenwoman.com.

Gili Yalo returns to city

Gili Yalo performs in Vancouver on Sept. 24 for a Chutzpah! Plus event. (photo from Chutzpah!)

Israeli singer-songwriter Gili Yalo returns to Vancouver for a Chutzpah! Plus concert on Sept. 24. It’s his first time back in the city since 2015, when he was part of the band Zvuloon Dub System. Yalo said he can’t wait – “the last time at the Chutzpah! Festival was wonderful!” he told the Independent.

In 2015, Zvuloon Dub was touring the United States and other countries. “Part of the tour was the Chutzpah! Festival,” said Yalo, “and we finished the tour in Montego Bay, Jamaica, performing in the legendary festival SumFest. After being part of Zvuloon Dub for seven years, I felt that it was the right time and the right spot to start something new. I came back to Tel Aviv and started working on new songs for my solo career.”

Yalo’s eponymous first solo album, released in 2017, was very well-received and he followed it up in 2019 with the EP Made in Amharica, on which he collaborated with Dallas-based musicians in Niles City Sound, a studio in Fort Worth. He has released several singles and has played on stages and in festivals around the world.

But, even though he has been a singer his whole life and performing almost as long – including in children’s choirs and during his time in the Israel Defence Forces – Yalo resisted making music a career. Among his alternate endeavours was being a club owner.

“I opened the club for Israeli Ethiopian people, who didn’t feel safe to stand in line at Israeli clubs; back then we got a lot of refusal just because of the colour of our skin,” he explained. “At the club, there were two floors, one of R&B and reggae/dancehall music, the other one was Ethiopian music. It really affected me because I have heard and learned lots of Ethiopian music.

“After several years of running the club, I felt that I needed to do something different in my life … and I told myself, you don’t want to regret not trying to achieve your biggest dream, and I decided that I had to try and overcome my fears. It was natural for me to make a fusion of Ethiopian music and Western music such as jazz, funk, R&B and reggae, because that was my life between home and the outside.”

Born in Ethiopia, Yalo was 4 or 5 years old when he and his family fled to escape famine in 1984. Traveling by foot, it took them about two months to walk from the Gondar region, in northern Ethiopia, to refugee camps in Sudan, where they stayed for several months, until being airlifted to Israel as part of Operation Moses.

“Lots of the songs that I’m writing are talking about identity, journey and integration into society, so I think all of it came from the experience of making aliyah and the difficulty in the process,” Yalo told the Independent.

There are many things that Yalo would still like to accomplish, but, right now, he said, “I especially want to share music.” He wants to write good songs, collaborate “with musicians that I appreciate, and take my music to a place that it can inspire lots of people.”

Playing in Vancouver with Yalo will be Nadav Peled (guitar), Dor Heled (keys), Billy Aukstik (trumpet), Eran Fink (drums) and Geoffrey Muller (bass).

About coming to the city, Yalo said, “I want to say that Vancouver is one of the best places in the world. I’ve seen so many places thanks to music and, if it wasn’t so far away from my family, I would definitely consider living there.”

For tickets to the Sept. 24, 8 p.m., concert at the Rothstein Theatre, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

Broza releases Tefila

David Broza has a new album out, and more. (photo from davidbroza.net)

This past spring, Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza, with the support of Temple Emanu-El in New York City, released Tefila, a collection of traditional prayers with new musical compositions by Broza and orchestral arrangements by his musical collaborator, Omer Avital.

Tefila (prayer in Hebrew) incorporates various forms: pop and jazz, gospel, folk and classical. While adhering to the intentions of the prayers themselves, the compositions attempt to recreate and re-imagine the experience of the typical Shabbat service, making it, as the album notes suggest, “contemplative, but also ecstatic and wholly engaging.”

The album’s release coincided with a monthly Kabbalat Shabbat celebration, Friday Night Hub, at Temple Emanu-El, a Reform synagogue located in Manhattan. Both the music and the event are geared to young professional Jewish adults between the ages of 21 and 39.

In a recent interview with the Independent, Broza explained how the album came about.

“I got a call from the program director of Temple Emanu-El, Gady Levy. He asked me if I would consider writing new music to the prayers of Kabbalat Shabbat,” said Broza. “I must admit that I was somewhat reluctant as I am not very familiar with the prayers, although I know them from my father. However, after a few months of quarantine, I opened the file with the prayers and started composing the melodies. It was as if the moment had arrived and what just a few months back I thought I would never be able to accomplish, here I was composing and writing a prayer a day for 14 days. Magical.”

With this project, Broza said he ventured into the journey of Kabbalat Shabbat, the receiving of Shabbat, and he fell in love “with the Hebrew scriptures that were written so many generations ago.”

“Now,” he said, “I have given them a new interpretation from someone who was born and raised in Israel. These prayers were written long before Israel existed, and long before the culture of the Hebrew language became a common language, my mother tongue. My voice and melodies blended the words and delivered the new version of these formidable and emblematic sacred verses.”

As for how the musicians came together for the album, Broza said, “I was very lucky to meet Omer, who is an incredibly talented jazz musician, on a New York City sidewalk – literally, by chance. He knew who I was, as he is Israeli, and I love his music. So, I asked him immediately to join me on the challenge of orchestrating the 14 pieces I had just composed. This was my first obstacle and Omer agreed to take it on himself.”

The pair started meeting at Avital’s studio in Brooklyn. In the process, Avital brought in musicians he performs with – all Israeli jazz musicians living in the area.

“It was so inspiring. We would play the songs, prayers, and I got to hear them interpreted in a very lively and profound way. The whole process took about a year before we were ready to record,” Broza said.

The album features 22 musicians, including string and horn sections, piano, percussion, as well as Broza on guitar and Avital on bass. Also appearing on the album is the 25-piece Moran Choir from Israel, which is conducted by Naomi Faran and with whom Broza has worked many times in his decades-long carrier. While in New York, Broza recruited gospel singers, too, as he wanted to add that fusion to the recording.

At the time Broza spoke with the Independent, he and his fellow musicians had performed the prayers from Tefila twice in front of a live audience at Temple Emanu-El.

“We have had about a thousand people attend each time. It’s been amazing. The rabbi of the synagogue, Joshua Davidson, leads the prayer and comes on stage to tell some stories and other comments in a very tasteful way so it is all a very profound experience,” Broza said.

An internationally recognized musician, Broza’s oeuvre includes songs in Hebrew, Spanish and English, with the influence of Spanish flamenco, American folk, rock and roll, and verse.

Social justice and peace advocacy are mainstays of his work, and his 1977 song “Yihye Tov” is considered an Israeli peace anthem. He has released more than 40 albums, many of which are multi-platinum.

Broza spoke highly of past visits to Vancouver and would welcome the chance to perform here again.

The album was released on Broza Records and distributed digitally by MNRK Music Group.

On Sept. 21, Broza Records will release a cover of “So Long, Marianne,” the first track in a three-song collection entitled David Broza Sings Leonard Cohen. Cover versions of Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” and “Dance Me to the End of Love” will be released on Oct. 21 and Nov. 21, respectively.

For more information, visit davidbroza.net.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

An afternoon of music

Mexican-Canadian singer Gustavo Herrera helped finish off the 2021/22 season of the Jewish Seniors Alliance Snider Foundation Empowerment Series. The classically trained operatic tenor, who has a powerful and melodic voice, entertained the audience with a mixture of classical and popular songs.

A Summer Afternoon of Music, the final event of this year’s Empowerment Series, was co-sponsored by JSA, the Kehila Society and Congregation Beth Tikvah. It took place in the synagogue’s sanctuary on June 27 and began with a catered BBQ lunch for the approximately 55 seniors who attended the event in-person. The program was also available via Zoom, making the total audience about 70 people. Herrera’s 94-year-old mother and his sister were among those who joined the concert virtually.

Toby Rubin, coordinator of the Kehila Society, welcomed everyone and introduced the guest. Herrera sang many songs, including “Somewhere,” “Could I Have This Dance,” “Granada,” “O Sole Mio,” “La Donna è Mobile,” “My Way” and “Only You.” He encouraged everyone to join in and to clap to some of the songs.

He pointed out that, although “My Way” is generally associated with Frank Sinatra, it was written by Canadian Paul Anka. A member of the audience requested “Hallelujah,” which Herrera sang in Spanish. Another request was “Boléro.” For the finale, Herrera asked everyone to join him in ending with “Hava Nagila.”

Gyda Chud, co-president of JSA, thanked Herrera, saying that the concert had been very uplifting and that his mother must be very proud.

Shanie Levin is program coordinator for Jewish Seniors Alliance and on the editorial board of Senior Linemagazine.