Music – Jewish Independent

Jazz that’s personal, timely

Andrea Superstein’s next local performance is at Centennial Theatre in North Vancouver on Feb. 5. Her new album is Worlds Apart. (photo from the artist)

For the last year, Andrea Superstein has been touring Canada with her new jazz album, Worlds Apart. Her next local performance will be at Centennial Theatre in North Vancouver on Feb. 5.

“I discovered my voice when I was a kid. My parents enrolled me in a musical theatre program at school and I sang in a choir,” Superstein told the Independent in a recent interview. “But my family were concerned about music as a profession for me. They thought the life of an artist was uncertain, so I went on to train as a teacher. I have been teaching theatre in several Vancouver schools since I moved here from Montreal. I still teach part-time. I taught at King David [High School] for awhile. But I always had music in my life as a hobby.”

At some point, the young teacher decided to explore if music could be more for her than a hobby. In 2009, she attended a weeklong summer swing camp, a jazz camp for adults in Sorrento, B.C. “I loved it,” she said. “It gave me access to the big names on the Vancouver jazz scene. I learned so much. I decided that, for my next birthday, I would get myself a gig. I knew I could do it and I did it.”

That performance was so successful and meant so much to her, she committed to pursuing jazz as a career. She couldn’t live without it anymore.

In 2010, Superstein released her first album, comprised of her arrangements of jazz standards. The same year, her debut performance at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival earned her a nomination for a Galaxie Rising Star award. Now, 10 years later, she is a well-known Vancouver jazz vocalist.

“I still teach theatre, while I’m still a learner in jazz,” she said with a smile. “It is good to have different outlets for my creativity.”

Her latest album, Worlds Apart, is mostly her own compositions, although it includes a few of her interpretations of other songs.

“I love jazz because it is often a reinvention of something old, something known, but the musician makes it her own, as I did with the song ‘My Favourite Things’ from The Sound of Music,” said Superstein by way of example. “I’ve seen the movie many times. I performed in the musical, in the roles of Maria and Reverend Mother.” She created her own arrangement of the song for her album.

“With Worlds Apart, I wanted to deliver something personal by examining the timely issues we all face,” she added. “We simultaneously exist in conflict and in symbiosis, and the contrast fascinates me. It is not only explored in the lyrics but also reflected in the harmonic structure and the songs’ arrangements.”

For her original compositions, Superstein writes both the music and the lyrics. She loves performing, interacting with the audience. “It gives me the biggest joy,” she said.

“I love talking to people between the songs, telling them funny stories about my music and lyrics, offering some extras. I love to hear the audience laugh or applaud. It’s like building a community, creating relationships. Not many jazz performers do that, I think, and it sets me apart. Or maybe it is my theatre background showing…. Usually, my talks are not scripted. There is always an element of impromptu. I try to be open to possibilities.”

Worlds Apart includes songs in three languages: English, French and Hebrew. “I grew up in Montreal, so I’m fluent in both English and French. When we performed this album in Montreal, people loved it when I spoke to them in French,” Superstein said.

She wrote the album’s Hebrew song years ago. “When I was 17, in 1996, I spent six months on an exchange program in Israel, on a kibbutz,” she said. “I was overwhelmed by the different life there, by the people. There were many bus bombings at that time, [Yitzhak] Rabin was recently assassinated, but people didn’t exhibit fear. Just the opposite. Everyone was passionate, on fire for life, and I wrote a song about it.”

When she started working on this latest album, she remembered that song and thought it appropriate for Worlds Apart, so she revised it and recorded it.

“This album is the first I didn’t produce myself,” said Superstein. “It’s good to have someone else to listen, to make suggestions. I invited the Montreal jazz singer Elizabeth Shepherd to be my producer. I also hired a group of Montreal musicians to record the disc. They are wonderful musicians, I enjoyed working with them, and I toured with them for the past year.”

The musicians performed in jazz concert series, in small theatres and bookstores; they also gave some house concerts.

“The life of a musician is a challenging one,” said Superstein, “but I’m fueled by my love for my art.”

For more information and other concert dates, visit andreasuperstein.com.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Artistic responses

Gabriolans held a candlelight vigil after antisemitic graffiti was found at Camp Miriam. An arts festival will take place Feb. 7-9. (photo from You’ve Got a Friend)

Since Camp Miriam on Gabriola Island was defaced with antisemitic graffiti in December, Gabriolans have shown support for the Jewish community, including a candlelight vigil on Jan. 2. Next month, island artists, musicians and writers will gather together to present You’ve Got a Friend: A Festival of Jewish and Gabriolish Art, Words and Music. The Feb. 7-9 festival will feature Jewish-themed visual art, music and writing, all created by residents of Gabriola, among them Juno nominees and literary prizewinners.

“When people heard about the vandalism at Camp Miriam,” said Sima Elizabeth Shefrin, one of the festival’s organizers, “many said, ‘What can I do to help? How can I show my support?’ The festival is a chance to celebrate our friendship and solidarity with each other and to move things on in a positive way. We took the title, You’ve Got a Friend, from Carole King’s old song.”

The festival program includes visual art by Shefrin, Heather Cameron and others at the Gabriola Arts and Heritage Centre. The opening reception will take place Feb. 7, 6-9 p.m., and the gallery will be open Feb. 8, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Feb. 9, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The concert Oy! will feature Bob Bossin, Paul Gellman, Dinah D, the Today Only Klezmer Band and others. It will take place Feb. 8, 7:30 p.m., at the Roxy Lounge and Cultural Club, with tickets available at North Road Sports. Admission is a suggested donation of $15.

Earlier on the Saturday, at 3 p.m., Amy Block will lead a celebration for Tu b’Shevat, the Jewish new year of the trees, at the arts and heritage centre.

Finally, Nu? – poetry and memoir by Janet Vickers, Naomi Wakan, Lisa Webster, Shayna Lindfield, Gloria Levi, Lawrence Feuchtwanger, George Szanto and Bossin – will be held at the arts and heritage centre Feb. 9, 1-3 p.m.

You’ve Got a Friend is supported by Camp Miriam, the Gabriola Arts Council and Anne Landry. For more information, contact Cameron at [email protected].

Classes on being a DJ

Michael Fraser teaches group electronic music and DJ classes at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. (photo from Michael Fraser)

As a violinist, music producer and DJ, Michael Fraser’s musical talents traverse many realms. Yet, despite the proficiency and versatility he has to create his art, Fraser believes that “personal connection to music transcends skill.”

It is that personal musical connection that the 30-year-old, born-and-raised Vancouverite hopes to instil in the next generations – be they performers or devotees – in the group electronic music and DJ classes he is teaching at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver through spring 2020.

The early stages of Fraser’s musical trajectory began in grade school as a Suzuki violin player, though numerous other styles – from classical to hip-hop – seeped into his sphere of artistic influences through various musical mentors. Among them was Vancouver-based saxophonist and flautist Tom Keenlyside, who had a tremendous impact and helped Fraser “connect with music in an abstract, rather than a theoretical, way.”

Marrying and starting a family with his partner Camille, though, has brought about a shift in Fraser’s musical focus in recent years. The sense of wonder possessed by children, and the simple way it is often expressed, led him to view things from a different perspective and to feel a sense of responsibility to teach.

Fraser began playing music for his son before his son was even born. When Isaac turned three, Fraser observed him connecting to the process of making music himself.

“After Isaac was born, I started to see that my purpose as a musician is to help young artists develop their innate creativity and coach artists to deeper levels of emotional intelligence,” said Fraser. “When my son asks to hear my music, I want to help him cultivate a relationship to music and life that goes beyond what words can express.”

Fraser’s professional musical career began in 2007, while in his late teens. Since then, he has collaborated with numerous recording artists, including the Ault Sisters, a Toronto-based vocal jazz trio; performed at the Shambhala Music Festival and the Montreal Jazz Festival, among many other venues; and opened for internationally known acts, such as Michael Bublé, Caravan Palace and Arrested Development.

His success as a live performer led him to working with Ben Affleck on the original score for Ben Affleck on the Meaning of Life, an animated short film about the actor and director’s Eastern Congo Initiative, which premièred at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. Fraser also appeared as a violin player in a scene of The Revenant, an Academy Award nominee for best picture in 2016 and for which Leonardo DiCaprio won the prize for best actor.

Currently, Fraser is devoting his expertise to artist development (on both the career and creative sides), as well as working with Black Octopus Sound, a company that produces samples and musical production tools.

Fraser said he has always felt “a visceral connection to Jewish music that can only be explained as being deeply embedded in my DNA. It is the main access point for a depth of emotion that can only be expressed through tones and rhythms.”

On Oct. 29, he began facilitating his first DJ course at the JCCGV for youth aged 10-16, showing them the basics of how music is composed electronically, and the ins and outs of being a DJ. This session ran until Dec. 17.

He could feel how the group connected with the music, and foresaw many new up-and-coming DJs in the Vancouver Jewish community.

“When I am in the class with students, we are focused on how the beat feels. Are there styles of music that feel good? Knowing your tastes is going to differentiate yourself from other DJs,” Fraser explained. “I will sit with a class and play various drums and figure out which one speaks to a particular student. Having that distinction brings us closer to the music – which chords carry tension and which carry release in chord progression? What does that connection to music feel like? How is it one can play the same series of notes in different order and have a different outcome feeling?”

His students take what was done in class and make musical experiments when they get home. Fraser finds that, when they open up GarageBand or Caustic, two of the more popular DJing apps, they don’t feel as though they are doing homework.

Often, he noted, students have used DJing apps before. He also pointed out that, unlike kids from earlier times, kids today don’t differentiate between DJs and music creators. Those barriers are completely gone, he said.

The courses – $180 for JCCGV members and $225 for non-members – comprise 10 lessons, run Tuesday evenings and are open to kids 10-16. Students should bring a pen and paper, a mobile device (laptop, tablet, cellphone) and headphones. For more information, visit jccgv.com/performing-arts/school-of-music.

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

A life of music, poetry

Ayelet Rose Gottlieb released two new collaborative CDs this year. (photo by Sergio Veranes)

Ayelet Rose Gottlieb released two new collaborative CDs this year: Who Has Seen the Wind? by the group Pneuma and I Carry Your Heart: A Tribute to Arnie Lawrence. Both creative endeavours will appeal to those who appreciate top-level musicianship, improvisation and meaning beyond the notes.

As she has done with other recordings, Who Has Seen the Wind?, which was released on Songlines, centres around a theme. In this case, the wind. Gottlieb and James Falzone, François Houle and Michael Winograd – clarinetists and fellow composers – have written music inspired by a range of poetry from various cultures, including Iranian and Japanese. The title of the CD comes from a poem by English poet Christina Rossetti of the same name, and Pneuma means breath, spirit or soul in ancient Greek.

I Carry Your Heart: A Tribute to Arnie Lawrence, which was released on Ride Symbol Records, also has poetry as one of its foundations, but it is, as its name says, a tribute to Arnie Lawrence and, specifically, his record Inside An Hourglass.

“Arnie’s Inside an Hourglass album has always been one of my favourite Arnie Lawrence records,” Gottlieb told the Independent. “In 1969, he went into the studio with his band and with his 8-year-old son Erik and with 5-year-old Dickie Davis Jr. (son of bassist Richard Davis). The band and children played a full record worth of improvised music together. This improvisation was released on the record label owned by the great flautist Herbie Mann.

“When I became a mother, this record started resonating with me in a new way. It reflected something of how I wanted to be a parent – in freedom, in music, in improvisation, with my kids and not in an ‘alternate reality’ that is separate from them.

“At one point,” she said, “I spoke to Arnie’s son, Erik, about the idea of revisiting the concept of that original album. Erik jumped on board and, along with my three little kids and our mutual friend and musical partner, Anat Fort, we went into pianist Chris Gestrin’s home studio in Coquitlam, B.C. My three little kids were 2 years old (twins) and 7 months old at the time of the recording. Baby Maia was with us for the full eight hours and the twins were there for about four hours. We also used some pre-recorded sounds that I edited in advance to create daily-sound tapestries for us to improvise over.

“We brought in some poetry by Arnie and E. E. Cummings and we let the day unfold as it did. The music on this album is all fully improvised – unrehearsed and unplanned. The biggest challenge was then to choose what to toss and what to keep. We loved so much of what came of this once-in-a-lifetime session.

“Our album is not a remake, but rather a revisiting of Arnie’s 1969 concept,” she stressed. “It’s a tribute to him and an extension of what he started back then, when his son was 8 years old. Fifty years later, Erik was creating this homage to his first album, now as the adult in the room, with his father’s mentee and her three children.”

Gottlieb met the elder Lawrence in Israel, where she grew up, when she was 16 years old; he had moved to Jerusalem from New York.

“He was the first to throw me into the deep waters of jazz,” she said. “My dear friend, fellow vocalist Julia Feldman, and I would go hear him play at the restaurant above the Khan Theatre. One day, someone told Arnie that the two teenagers sitting in the corner night after night are singers! At the start of the next set, somewhere around the middle of the first tune, Arnie walked up to me with a mic and commanded – ‘Sing.’ And that, I did.

“From that night on, Julia and I would frequent any restaurant, café or club he played at. In order to be able to hang with the ever-changing, always burning band, I memorized hundreds of tunes off of my father’s LPs and transcribed countless solos. After awhile, Arnie started calling me to perform with him, not as a sit-in guest, but as an equal on the bandstand. I always felt that playing alongside Arnie elevated my own playing to new levels. His trust in me allowed me to trust myself and my own musicality, at the fragile age of 17.”

Around this time, Gottlieb began composing. “I was finding my voice and my place in music,” she said. “When, at 19, I decided to go study at New England Conservatory in Boston, Arnie, who was my greatest advocate, wrote a wonderful recommendation letter, which felt like he was delivering me to my future teachers – Ran Blake, Dominique Eade, George Russell and others.

“Though my time with Arnie was spent primarily playing jazz standards, I feel that he gave me my foundations as a composer, improviser and as an educator. He taught me to work deeply with my ears, and to be present and connected. He gave me his trust, before I really did anything to deserve it. And this trust gave me the wings I still use to fly.”

Gottlieb is an avid poetry reader and collector, and has “shelves full of books and folders full of files with texts that I may or may not use some day, but they ‘feed’ me with inspiration and insight, daily. In recent years,” she said, “I’ve also been working as a poetry and prose translator from Hebrew to English.”

She sees everything, “through ‘glasses’ of music and poetry,” she said. “Music informs all of my experiences and poetry is built into my world of associations and my way of expressing myself in the world. When I compose, perform or improvise, I am the most ‘me,’ without filters. It feels like a calling, and a personal necessity. I’ve never had a time in my life in which I didn’t have music. It has been my companion and an extension of me, ever since I can remember myself. Some of my earliest memories involve music-making.

“It is also my portal into the world of spirit,” she said. “I experience inspiration in a great variety of ways. I often feel that the music I’m writing or improvising is received, rather than created. Of course, there is lots of knowledge, experience and work that goes into it, too. But this instinctual, primal connection is at the core of all of my works. This is why, when I make music, I do not think about anything other than what the music asks of me.

“I start thinking about the audience when it’s time to birth the music into a physical existence – when I’m working on packaging, releasing an album, bookings, getting the word out about it, etc.”

As an example of this transition from inner to outer focus, Gottlieb gave Pneuma, all of the members of which contributed to Who Has Seen the Wind?

“My contribution,” she said, “was a six-part song cycle based on Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘Who Has Seen the Wind?’…. This song cycle is a great example of my connection to music and poetry.

“The idea to work with clarinets was inspired by my paternal grandfather, who was an amateur clarinetist. Right from the start, this project was a way for me to communicate with him, and continue our connection and relationship beyond the limitations of the physical world. How wonderful to have such a thing as music, which bridges the gap between the earthly and the spheres beyond it!

“Christina Rossetti’s poem, which I know so well, kept surfacing in my associations as I was walking the streets of Vancouver with my babies in the stroller, in autumn 2016. From this poem, eventually emerged the form of this composition.”

When it came time to bring the music into physical form, the band members and their producer, Tony Reif, chose photographs for the CD sleeve by B.C.-based photographer Gem Salsberg, which, said Gottlieb, “pair a visual with the music, making it all the more accessible and clarifying our intensions with this set of music, inspired by the wind. We wrote liner notes, to bring our audience even further into the process of the creation and the stories behind the tunes. The album was released with a beautiful 16-page booklet, with all of the poetry printed.”

While the CD was released just this year, Pneuma’s première performance was at the Vancouver Jazz Festival in 2017.

“I love interacting with audiences,” said Gottlieb, “hearing people’s experiences with the music I make, answering questions, sharing muses, etc. The audience and their support fills my batteries as I continue on my path in music. There is always that back and forth between the internal work that is required in order to create the work and the external, open part of it – which is about sharing it generously, with as many people as possible.”

For more information on or to purchase either of these CDs, or other Gottlieb albums, visit ayeletrose.com.

Taali writes, sings heart out

Taali’s EP Were Most of Your Stars Out? was released last month.

“Kol ha’olam kulo gesher tzar me’od, veha’ikar lo lifached k’lal” – “The entire world is a narrow bridge, and the main thing is to not be afraid.” Taali’s recently released EP Were Most of Your Stars Out? begins with “The Main Thing Is,” and, it seems, the singer-songwriter and producer has followed Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s advice from more than 200 years ago, and made the prayer her own. While there are countless versions, Taali’s a cappella take showcases her rich, full sound and sets the mood for the entire recording.

The name of the EP comes from J.D. Salinger’s novella Seymour: An Introduction, which Taali (née Talia Billig) highlights as her favourite book. On her Facebook page, she cites the passage from which the album title comes: “Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion. Never. I’m a little over-excited now. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? … I’m so sure you’ll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?”

Were Most of Your Stars Out? comprises acoustic versions of seven songs. It was produced by the label Rainbow Blonde Records, a collective she co-founded with her partner, singer-songwriter and producer José James, and engineer and producer Brian Bender. Released last month, the EP follows almost on the heels of Taali’s full-length record I Am Here, which came out in March.

Taali describes her music as Jewish contemporary pop, but, while Jewish melodies and/or concepts permeate her compositions, the sound is definitely more pop than liturgical, though she likes her minor keys. And all listeners, regardless of religious or secular affiliations, will find something to connect to in the lyrics. In an extensive interview with the now-defunct online publication Arq, Taali – whose stage name is a family nickname – talks about music being communal. “If I’m promoting it,” she said, “it has to be in the service of community.”

That philosophy, combined with her appreciation for the Jewish tradition of storytelling, which was instilled in her growing up, and her musical skill and knowledge, makes Taali’s songs eminently listenable and relatable. That Were Most of Your Stars Out? is an acoustic recording adds to the intimacy. The use of synthesizer on “This Is What Love Is” and “Wayward Star” takes away some of that atmosphere, but one nonetheless gets the feeling that Taali doesn’t put on airs, and would put as much heart into singing off the cuff at a small gathering as she does performing on a concert stage.

Born in Manhattan, Taali has lived most of her life in New York City, with the exception of a couple of years in Los Angeles. One of the narrow bridges she has had to cross is vocal cord surgery, in 2016, which meant months of being unable to speak or sing. She turned her focus to songwriting for other performers during this period of recovery but, she told Billboard, there was one song she “couldn’t conceive of just giving” to another singer, and that was “Hear You Now.”

“I have quite a bit of trauma myself that I’ve never really felt safe enough to address,” she said about the song in that interview. “It was really wrenching, but I tried to do justice to those feelings. It’s the beginnings of talking to myself rather than an on-the-nose accounting of what happened, and what I tried to do, lyrically, was apologize to myself for the years I didn’t have the words or strength to name or push away these people who were treating me badly.”

“Hear You Now” is about finally saying “all the words you haven’t said,” “the words that you swallowed down” – “You held it in, now lay it all to rest…. Lift away the weight of everything you couldn’t say” and “Make them hear you now.”

The song “Snowfall on Orchard,” which closes Were Most of Your Stars Out?, also has special meaning. It was written about five years ago with José James, who provides some lovely vocals and beautiful harmony on the track.

“It’s the first original song that we wrote together,” says Taali in her bio, “and I think it’s a little postcard of a very, very optimistic moment in our lives, and a very in love moment.”

Were Most of Your Stars Out? is available from several online music services, including Spotify, iTunes and Amazon.

’Tis the season for jazz

Jazz artist Maya Rae (photo © Maya Rae Music)

Jazz artist Maya Rae has a busy week ahead. Tomorrow night, Nov. 30, she takes part in Temple Sholom’s Fall Fest Fun-raiser, after a benefit concert earlier in the day at Brentwood Presbyterian Church called Socks for Souls. On Sunday, Dec. 1, she is among 11 bands that will perform in Jazz Walk at the Shadbolt. And, on Dec. 4, she is at the Vancouver Playhouse, participating in the show Strings and Jazz.

“Definitely this time of year is very busy when it comes to gigging and playing shows,” Rae told the Independent. “Because it’s surrounding the holidays, people are needing musicians for lots of things, so there are more opportunities to work right now. I’ve also been lucky enough to have played numerous shows throughout the years, so people are reaching out more now, hiring me for future gigs as well.”

One of the highlights of Rae’s past year was a trip to the southern United States.

“I went to Nashville last March to record my album and that was definitely one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had so far in my career,” said Rae.

The album, which will see its release in April, is the young musician’s second.

“Every song on it was written by my brother and myself, so the whole project is composed of originals,” she said. “My debut album, Sapphire Birds, is made up of some jazz standards, rearranged pop tunes and a few originals as well. The upcoming album, Can You See Me?, focuses on my original music from the past year, a lot of it reflecting on what I’ve learned and experienced. The music is incredibly personal, but I’m super-excited to share it with the rest of the world.”

Most of the songs on the new recording were inspired by things that have happened to Rae or to people close to her.

“I graduated high school back in June, and so a lot of the songs are about what I experienced throughout that journey,” she explained. “For example, ‘Can You See Me?,’ the title track of the record, is about removing the mask that hides one’s true self and not being afraid to be who you are. I found that, throughout high school (and outside of it), people try so hard to fit a certain box and be who they think they should be rather than who they really are. This song is about removing that façade and being OK with showing your true colours.

“‘Sun Will Come Out Again’ is another tune on the record that I wrote with so many people in mind. So much of the time, when we’re stressed, sad, angry, or any other uncomfortable feeling, it feels like the end of the world. This song is about how, no matter one’s current situation, whether it be big or small, there is always light at the end of the tunnel. That dark, upsetting feeling will not last forever.”

For more information on Rae’s music and upcoming performances, visit mayaraemusic.com.

The Fall Fest Fun-raiser (templesholom.ca/fall-fest-fun-raiser) on Saturday starts at 7 p.m. and also features Annette Kozicki and Friends and Tal & Yael’s Israeli dance, while Strings and Jazz on Dec. 4 includes Sinfonietta, VSO School of Music’s honour jazz combo (vsoschoolofmusic.ca).

The Dec. 1 Jazz Walk is a daylong event, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., at the Shadbolt Cenre for the Arts. The scheduled lineup includes Rae, Dave Robbins Sextet, Lucine Yeghiazaryan, Dawn Pemberton Quartet, Brad Turner Quintet, Grant Stewart Trio, Cory Weeds Quintet featuring Roy Mccurdy, Steve Kaldesta, Grant Stewart, Alyssa Allgood, Stephen Riley, Chris Hazelton, Jill Townsend Jazz Orchestra and Ernest Turner. It also includes roundtable discussions with various people in the field, such as archival record producer Zev Feldman of Resonance Records in Los Angeles. Tickets and more information can be found at shadboltcentre.com.

Reimagining Hatikvah

Molly-Ann Leikin (photo from Molly-Ann Leikin)

For most of her five-decade musical career, Molly-Ann Leikin felt something was missing – many English speakers singing Hatikvah had no idea what the Hebrew words coming out of their mouths actually mean. So, she set about creating an English version of the Israeli national anthem.

Her version is not a translation, Leikin stressed in an interview with the Independent, from her home in Santa Barbara, Calif. She contends that no translation could possibly convey the meaning of the original Hebrew. Instead, she wanted an anthem set to the same melody that everyone singing it could enjoy, understand and, as she said, “feel the passion.”

Born in Ottawa, Leikin graduated from the University of Toronto. The author of How to Write a Hit Song and How to be a Hit Songwriter, she has composed themes and songs for more than five dozen television shows and movies, and her work has been performed by a diverse array of entertainers, such as Anne Murray, Tina Turner and Billy Preston. Among many other things, she has done private songwriting coaching in Vancouver since the 1980s.

Early in her career, Leikin said she felt there was no way for a tunesmith to make a living in Canada, so she hopped into her dented red Volkswagen Bug and drove – starting her journey during a severe snowstorm – to Los Angeles. Now, she co-writes and consults with new artists and lyricists, helping them advance their original songs to compete in the marketplace.

Leikin lists 12 of her clients as Grammy winners, another 17 as Grammy nominees. According to the latest count on her website, she has helped 7,518 writers and artists place their work in movies, television shows, on CDs, in video games and commercials, and their tracks can be downloaded from various sources on the internet.

“My motto is, ‘If you’ve got the tracks, I’ve got the contacts,’” she said.

In addition to writing songs, Leikin writes bar/bat mitzvah speeches, toasts, roasts, vows and memorials.

Revisioning Hatikvah

When she was a university student in the late 1960s, Leikin spent a year in Ashkelon and, after attending an ulpan for four months, could understand the lyrics of Hatikvah (The Hope).

In 2014, while in Toronto for the Toronto International Film Festival, she was stung by bees and fell into a coma for two years. By the time she recovered, in 2016, a freak accident on her right foot left her unable to walk for another 18 months. Every doctor she saw in Santa Barbara misdiagnosed her. Devastated and unable to work, she lost her home, her businesses and her savings.

In 2017, an old friend she had not seen in 37 years called from Montreal to wish her happy birthday. The friend arranged for Leikin to be transported from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. There, the doctors discovered the problem and a 45-minute operation fixed it.

On the way into surgery, she promised God, if He would heal her, she would use her gifts to create something to benefit the Jewish community throughout the world.

During her three-month recovery, she tuned into a classical station and kept hearing the melody to Hatikvah. The words to what would become her take on the anthem slowly began to form.

A family in Toronto, for whom she had written a eulogy, asked Leikin what her next project would be. She told them about Hatikvah, and they arranged for a grant for her to record it. (That family wishes to be anonymous.)

Hatikvah became Israel’s official anthem in 2004. The melody had been heard throughout Europe and was adapted by Czech composer Bedrich Smetana. The Hebrew lyrics are based on a poem by Naftali Berz Imber, who was from what is now Zolochiv, Ukraine.

A growing number of synagogues in the Los Angeles area and throughout the continent, Leikin said, have been playing her version, the chorus of which is “Feel the hope that’s rising everywhere / Feel our song become an answered prayer / For our sisters and brothers as we stand with all of them / In our homeland Jerusalem.”

The B.C. connection

Leikin maintains strong ties to British Columbia. Early in her songwriting career, she was hired to write “It’s Time to Say I Love You,” the theme song for The Other Side of the Mountain Part 2, filmed at Victoria’s Butchart Gardens.

“I flew up to see what I would be writing about and, in the middle of all that beautiful, I didn’t want to leave,” she said. “Almost every summer since 1977 I’ve been back to Vancouver. I go there to celebrate the High Holidays and Passover. When you guys figure out how to make it rain less, I’m moving into English Bay.”

Leikin’s “Hatikvah” can be heard at youtu.be/XV0cX7jB4Q0.

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

A musical tribute to Denburg

Moshe Denburg’s music will be featured in a tribute concert by the Orchid Ensemble on Nov. 10 at the Annex. (photo from Orchid Ensemble)

The Orchid Ensemble is giving composer Moshe Denburg a most appropriate gift for his 70th birthday – a concert.

The Nov. 10 tribute at the Annex will feature Denburg’s music, as well as the world première of a new work inspired by the melody of one of his first recorded songs. Denburg has collaborated with the Orchid Ensemble over the years and has been a driving force in intercultural music in Canada, including being the founder of the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra, in 2001.

On the Orchid Ensemble’s tribute program are the three pieces Denburg wrote for the group’s Road to Kashgar (2001), which was nominated for a Juno Award; “El Adon” (2009), a four-movement work that will be performed consecutively as a suite for the first time (one movement being a world première); “Petals of the Flame” (2012), which will be performed with flamenco dancer Michelle Harding; and the North American première of “In Midstream” (2010), a solo zheng (Chinese zither) work performed by Dailin Hsieh.

The icing on the cake, so to speak, will be the performance by the ensemble – Lan Tung (erhu/Chinese violin), Hsieh (zheng) and Jonathan Bernard (percussion) – of “And Gather Our Dispersed from the Ends of the Earth,” by Denburg’s nephew, composer Elisha Denburg.

“I haven’t heard it yet, so I can’t say much about it at all!” said the elder Denburg. “As he has said, it is based on a musical melody of mine, which I set to the liturgical text ‘Gather our dispersed from the ends of the earth….’ This song appears on one of my first albums, and was recorded in New York City in the mid-’70s with a certain well-known ensemble there called the Neginah Orchestra. For many years, it received regular airplay on Kol Israel Radio. I am really looking forward to hearing what Elisha did with it. I will plug him here – he is a composer of depth and originality.”

The younger Denburg’s music has been commissioned, performed and recorded across Canada, as well as in the United States. The award-winning composer has collaborated with numerous artists and his music has aired on CBC Radio 2. Essential Opera commissioned him, with librettist Maya Rabinovitch, to create a one-act chamber opera, titled Regina, about the first female rabbi, Regina Jonas, who was ordained in 1935.

About how his uncle’s melody inspired him, Elisha Denburg told the Independent, “It is a song that invokes very specific and special memories for me, singing around the Shabbat table with him and my family when I was young. It also espouses a key Jewish value: the strength of community. This is why I always try to incorporate it into my chanting whenever I help lead Rosh Hashanah services at my synagogue in Toronto (First Narayever Egalitarian Congregation). In composing a new work for intercultural trio, inspired by this melody, I am attempting to give back to him and our community the musical and spiritual gifts I have been so fortunate to receive in my life so far.”

In looking back at his professional life and how his composing has evolved, Moshe Denburg said, “At the beginning, I was mainly a songwriter and melodist, though I did take it seriously and I still consider a good song and a well-formed melody to be a real achievement. However, over the years, I delved much more deeply into the art of composition, and by that I mean writing for larger forces (like orchestras) and utilizing a broader musical language.”

Denburg has been creating music for almost all of his 70 years; his first composition coming before he was 10 years old. “As a child,” he said, “I improvised melodies, even at the age of 4 or 5. I believe it was when I was 8, I improvised a melody to the words of the synagogue prayer ‘Hashiveinu Hashem eilecha …’ (‘God, bring us back to you …’), and it stuck. It was very cantorial, as this, being the son of a rabbi, was my first influence and inspiration – the modes of synagogue prayer.”

The interest in world music came later. “For many of my generation,” said Denburg, “this connection with and attraction to the music of other cultures started in the 1960s, with the Beatles and others, who were incorporating non-Western instruments – tabla and sitar, for example – into their works. It was a great new stream to draw upon, in order to create something new and exciting. I still think of intercultural music-making as having unlimited potential, with a much larger palette of sounds, and a noble endeavour and homage to everyone’s humanity.”

Retirement is not in Denburg’s plans. He said, “There are three prongs to my musical life, which continue unabated:

“1. Tzimmes, my Jewish music ensemble, is back in the studio, working on some tracks both old and new. Some tracks were begun in 2005-06 and have sat on the back burner for many years. Some pieces are newly composed and arranged. I hope to release them, perhaps as an album or perhaps singly online, over the next year or two.

“2. The Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (VICO) continues to be a going concern and, though I have stepped back from being hands-on in the organization, I am still involved creatively, contributing compositions and participating in a variety of concert and recording projects.

“3. Apart from the VICO, I am still a composer for hire. In fact, Lan Tung, the leader of the Orchid Ensemble and my musical colleague of many years, recently initiated a project that would see me, funding permitting, commissioned to write for another intercultural ensemble of hers, the Sound of Dragon Ensemble.”

In addition, Denburg has at least two “bucket list” items: “Writing a large-scale work of many movements for the full Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (25-30 players); continuing to record my works, both Jewish and intercultural.”

For tickets to And Gather Our Dispersed from the Ends of the Earth – Moshe Denburg Tribute Concert at the Annex on Nov. 10, at 4 p.m., visit mosheorchid.brownpapertickets.com.

AvevA plays at Chutzpah!

AvevA and her band perform at the Rickshaw Theatre Nov. 14. (photo from Chutzpah!)

“I’m really looking forward to performing for a new audience in Vancouver, and to seeing Vancouver for the first time,” Israeli-Ethiopian singer-songwriter AvevA Dese – who goes by her first name – told the Independent.

The Rehovot-based musician will perform at the Rickshaw Theatre Nov. 14 as part of the Chutzpah! Festival. She will be coming with a band: Noam Israeli (drums), Nadav Peled (guitar) and Itamar Gov-Ari (keyboard). While in North America, the group will also perform in New York and Los Angeles.

Though AvevA has been singing since she can remember, she started songwriting in her teens. Her participation, in 2012, on the Israeli reality TV show The Voice led her to Rimon School of Music, in Ramat Hasharon, a suburb of Tel Aviv. This, in turn, led the musician – who mainly listened to American soul music when she was a kid – to explore her roots. While AvevA was born in Israel, her parents made aliyah in 1984, having escaped civil war and famine in Ethiopia by making the weeks-long journey to a refugee camp in Sudan, from where they were brought to Israel as part of Operation Moses.

“It was a process, trying to get in touch with my roots, my heritage,” she said. “As a child, I wasn’t interested in my heritage because I felt I had to choose either I’m Ethiopian or I’m Israeli. So, I chose Israeli because I wanted to fit in.

“Growing up, I understood that I can be both, but I wasn’t eager to learn and know about my Ethiopian roots – that acutely started through music. When I was at Rimon School of Music, I started singing in an ensemble called Afro-Pop, where the music we played was mostly African music, and I fell in love with it. That same year, I was invited to perform with the Idan Raichel Project, where I performed an Ethiopian song for the first time. I started collaborating with Ethiopian writers, I’ve visited Ethiopia three times in the last four years, and I’m still learning more each day.”

AvevA’s discography includes the EP Who Am I, which was released in November 2016, and the LP In My Thoughts, released in March of this year. “I’m now working on some new songs that I can’t wait to release,” she said. “I hope it will happen in 2020.”

AvevA said she generally begins composing on the guitar. “I’ll start jamming and, when I find something that I like, I just go with it and try to complete that idea into a song.” However, she added, “A song can change a lot in the process of recording and working with a producer. For example, my song ‘Won’t Let You’ wasn’t written before I started working with the producer Isaac DaBom. I had a whole different song that he didn’t think was good enough, so he asked me to rewrite it and that’s how I wrote ‘Won’t Let You.’”

AvevA sings in English and Amharic (the national language of Ethiopia), and some of her songs use Ethiopian scales.

“Ethiopian music is primarily based on a five-tone scale system, known as a pentatonic scale, and the Western scale generally consists of seven notes,” she explained.

AvevA said she feels no pressure to be a “poster girl” for Israel’s openness to diversity. “I don’t feel that pressure,” she stressed. “I share my story and the way that I see things. In Israel, like in any other place, there are beautiful sides and there are ugly sides.”

B.C.-based Leila Neverland, in her trio Mountain Sound, opens for AvevA on Nov. 14, 8 p.m. For tickets to the concert – Rickshaw Theatre is a 19+ venue – and other Chutzpah! shows, visit chutzpahfestival.com.

Much going on for songwriter

Harriet Frost performs at Jacob’s Ladder Festival in Israel last May. (photo from Harriet Frost)

How best to describe Harriet Frost’s music? “Impressionistic poetry, witty wordplay, music that is intimate and universal,” is what CBC Radio had to say. “Folk rock with a jazz funk twist,” read another recent write-up ahead of a performance at the renowned Jacob’s Ladder Festival in Israel this May.

“My music explores personal, topical, political and spiritual landscapes. They can be humorous, joyful, painful, ironic, beautiful and not so beautiful. It’s poetry, folk, jazz, rock, spoken word, ancient and postmodern,” she says in her own words.

What is not open to interpretation is that the Vancouver singer, songwriter and musician has had a busy spring and summer. In addition to her Israeli performance, she has been organizing local house concerts in town and working on a new album.

Music is an integral part of what she does outside of being on stage or in a studio, as well. Her work at the Louis Brier Home and Hospital has shown the therapeutic effects music has on people regardless of their age. “You can reach people, even those in deep states of dementia, through music,” she said. Frost also teaches Judaic studies, trains youth and adults to chant from Torah, and has been exploring cantorial music.

The Israel connection

Jacob’s Ladder is more than a music festival to Frost – it is the title of a song she wrote and dedicated to her father, who escaped Nazi Germany for Palestine in 1939. He witnessed the birth of the Israeli state in his decade living there. The song is featured in the Lucy McCauly documentary film Facing the Nazi Era.

Canada ultimately became home for the Frost family, yet the connection with Israel remained. When it was time for university, Harriet chose four years at Hebrew University in Jerusalem – a student by day and a musician playing in the cafés at night. She was the musical director of the groundbreaking theatre troupe, the Gypsies, made up of Palestinian, Israeli and North American artists who performed peace-themed musicals for Israeli and Palestinian youth. Her personal musical biography is so resonant with Israeli content that when a friend told her last year about Jacob’s Ladder and urged her to look into it, she couldn’t resist. The invitation from its organizers came a few months later.

Founded in 1976, Jacob’s Ladder is the longest and most established music festival in Israel, featuring a wide selection of folk genres and international music presented each spring and fall. Located in the north, on the Sea of Galilee, Frost said her first feeling upon arrival was like being at the Vancouver Folk Festival at Jericho Beach Park, due to the proximity to the water.

“It was 45 degrees,” she recalled. “I had no idea what to expect. When I was first introduced as a Vancouverite and the only Canadian performing at the festival this year, people started cheering. It was so welcoming and fantastic.”

She played in an air-conditioned 250-seat hall filled to capacity with an audience comprised of Americans, Israelis, Europeans, Canadians and fellow musicians “of all ages,” she said, “teenagers, families with kids, millennials, a full arc of generations.”

At the Ginosar Kibbutz and Hotel, which hosts the famous event, she met numerous performers who had come to the festival and were playing music in the hotel lobby between their own sets. It was an extraordinary opportunity to connect with some of the country’s most notable folk musicians, she said.

Concerts and album

Through November and beyond, along with other venues, Frost is organizing a series of house concerts, given the positive response to one she held in April in advance of her Jacob’s Ladder appearance. As the name suggests these are concerts hosted in someone’s home, where, according to Frost, “musicians have an opportunity to present their original material in a concert situation, unlike in a café or club where folks may be eating, drinking and socializing.

“There is an intimate concert vibe that is created in the home. You have the freedom to play a full night’s worth of material and really connect with a small audience (between 30 and 50). People attend specifically to listen to new music.” Currently, Frost has been collaborating at these concerts with Vancouver multi-instrumentalist Martin Gotfrit.

And a new album is in the works. Working title: Jacob’s Ladder.

For more information about the album and upcoming concerts, visit harrietfrost.com.

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