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November 27, 2009
Hope-infused music
Baptist choir joins Neshama Carlebach on CD.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Neshama Carlebach’s new CD, Higher & Higher, was released last month. It features the Green Pastures Baptist Church Choir and was recorded and produced by Sojourn Records. Also released in October by Sojourn was Songs of Peace, a recording of Carlebach’s father, Shlomo, from two separate performances in 1973 – recordings that were only discovered in the last two years.
On Higher & Higher, Carlebach and the choir sing music that was written by her father, who died in 1994. They sing one original composition, “The Real,” written by Carlebach, her producer/pianist, David Morgan, and producer Mark Ambrosino of Sojourn Records. The nine arrangements by Carlebach, Morgan and Ambrosino on Higher & Higher are quite different from Shlomo Carlebach’s original compositions, mixing gospel and Chassidic styles. Since the arrangements highlight the choir, this CD has the opportunity of appealing to people who aren’t fans of Rabbi Carlebach’s renditions; however, traditionalists may be disappointed. Though the recordings are derived from the same musical source, the audiences for Higher & Higher and Songs of Peace may well be different.
After her father died, Neshama Carlebach agreed to perform the months of shows that had been booked for him and, to this day, she still mainly performs her father’s material, approaching it in her own unique way.
According to Carlebach’s bio on the Sojourn website, Higher & Higher “is the intersection of faith and talent, an album written from the perspective of a particular faith that applies to all. Written by a rabbi, performed by his daughter and a Baptist choir, the songs preach in the least secular way, sharing a message of unity and hope. Other than faith, one of Carlebach’s greatest inspirations on the album was the devastation Hurricane Katrina visited upon New Orleans.” Carlebach held a benefit in conjunction with the release of the CD there.
“It’s become one of my personal missions, to help the victims of New Orleans,” Carlebach says on the website, which continues, “‘Ata,’ which literally translated from the Hebrew means ‘without words,’ is a hope-infused blues vocalization that conveys the emotion and spirit Carlebach and the choir feel for the fallen city in a manner purer than words. ‘Higher and Higher,’ the album’s namesake, is both mournful and moving, a message of appreciating life’s fleeting nature. What was born out of fear and sadness has become inspiration, from destruction came creation.”
“The album is all about wanting more,” Carlebach told the Independent in an e-mail interview. “The song ‘Higher and Higher’ refers to a longing that can transcend our own personal boundaries to reach out to others and God in a way we never have.”
On working with the Green Pastures Baptist Choir, she said, “The musicality and coming together of our groups was so powerful that none of us could believe it.”
Apparently, Shlomo Carlebach’s first recording, in 1958, featured background vocals by singers from a Baptist gospel choir, so there is something particularly appropriate about the release of Higher & Higher on the 15th anniversary of his death.
People can buy songs from Higher & Higher and Songs of Peace at sojournrecords.com.
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