Ayelet Rose Gottlieb

Community milestones … JFS, Krell, Hart, Rappoport, Broca & Gottlieb

Clockwise from top left: committee members Tanja Demajo, Michelle Dodek, Michelle Gerber, Stan Shaw, Renee Katz and Simone Kallner. (photo sextet from JFS)

Jewish Family Services has formed a food security committee. This team will be responsible for leading the transition plan of the JFS’s Jewish Food Bank to its new and dedicated facility near Main and East 3rd Avenue in Vancouver. The committee, which reports to the board of directors, will be focused on supporting the Food Security program development project as a steering committee for the move into the new facility; and assisting as content advisors on an ongoing basis in the areas of food programs planning, security, building management, partnerships and community engagement, and communication.

Committee members have served on the Jewish Food Security Task Force and sit on several committees in the community. The committee co-chairs – Simone Kallner and Stan Shaw – also serve on the JFS board.

This year, a Food Security Project website will be launched to keep people apprised of the committee’s work. It will also contain upcoming town hall meetings, with the most current community stakeholder engagement and input opportunities.

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Created in 1967, the Order of Canada is one of our country’s highest civilian honours. Its companions, officers and members take to heart the motto of the order, “desiderantes meliorem patriam” (“they desire a better country”). Appointments are made by the governor general on the recommendation of the Advisory Council for the Order of Canada and, on Dec. 30, it was announced that Dr. Robert Krell was among the 61 new appointees.

photo - Dr. Robert Krell — Dr. Robert Krell *(photo courtesy)*

Krell was appointed Member of the Order of Canada for “his contributions to our understanding of mass ethnopolitical violence, and for his advocacy on behalf of Holocaust survivors.”

A professor emeritus of the University of British Columbia, department of psychiatry, Krell’s research and interests are the psychiatric treatment of aging survivors of massive trauma; and antisemitism, racism and prejudice education.

Krell was born in Holland and survived the Holocaust in hiding. The Krell family moved to Vancouver, where he obtained an MD from UBC and eventually became professor of psychiatry. In his psychiatric practice, Krell was director of child and family psychiatry and also treated Holocaust survivors and their families, as well as Dutch survivors of Japanese concentration camps.

Krell established a Holocaust education program for high school students in 1976 and an audiovisual documentation program recording survivor testimony in 1978 and assisted with the formation of child survivor groups starting in 1982. He served on the International Advisory Council of the Hidden Child Gathering in New York in 1991, and he is founding president and board member of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, which opened in 1994 and which teaches 20,000 students annually. He has authored and co-edited 10 books, 20 book chapters and more than 50 journal articles. He continues to write and speak on Holocaust-related topics.

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With thanks to HaShem, Schara Tzedeck Synagogue members Alexander Hart and Kathryn Selby are honoured and delighted to announce the engagement in Jerusalem of their son Shmuel Hart to Reut Rappoport, daughter of Rabbi Jason and Meira Rappoport of Alon Shvut, Gush Etzion, Israel.

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An article on the mosaic work of Lilian Broca has been published in the international peer-reviewed academic magazine Journal of Mosaic Research, out of Izmir, Turkey. It can be found at dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/jmr (click on English version or translation if necessary), scroll down to article 18, which is “From Virtue to Power: Explorations in Female Heroism – The Mosaics of Lilian Broca,” and click on PDF on the upper lefthand side. The article was written by Angela Clarke, PhD, of the Italian Cultural Centre here in Vancouver.

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Jerusalem-born, Montreal-based composer and vocalist Ayelet Rose Gottlieb released the album 13 Lunar Meditations: Summoning the Witches on Jan. 12, the first new moon of the new year.

A collaborative project, this double-vinyl release includes poetry by more than 20 women and girls from around the globe, a choir of improvising vocalists conducted by DB Boyko, and features vocalist Jay Clayton. Through a multicultural approach, 13 Lunar Meditations is an acoustic exploration focusing on the moon, our relationship with it and its effects on us.

“The moon speaks to the universal and to the intimate female presence,” Gottlieb shared on her inspiration, from her personal journey as an artist and mother. “In this difficult time we live in, having a connection with each other, with the world around us and with the universe may be the most radical act of resilience.”

In 2015, Boyko commissioned Gottlieb to compose a new song-cycle for her VOICE OVER mind Festival in Vancouver. Gottlieb composed the first draft of this song-cycle for her own quintet and Boyko’s improvisers’ choir. Later that year, the piece was presented again at John Zorn’s the Stone, in New York City, where Clayton joined in for the first time.

Gottlieb’s song-cycle traces the phases of the moon, from birth to full glory and all the way back to emptiness. The compositions range in musical expression from wild and experimental, to melodic, rhythmic and light. All are laced with improvisation and rooted in jazz with Turkish and Armenian undertones. Primarily sung in English, also interwoven are Hebrew, German, French, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish and Japanese.

Gottlieb invited more than 20 women and girls to write texts on their personal relationship to the moon, which inspired her compositions. Ages 4 to 70, these contributors represent a global community from diverse backgrounds and nationalities – from Australia to Morocco, a poet, a gynecologist, a lawyer, an energy healer, a sex worker, a grandmother, and others.

Supported by Canada Council for the Arts and a Kickstarter campaign that concluded at 109%, the album was recorded in Montreal. On it, Gottlieb, Clayton and Boyko are joined by Coeur Luna, Turkish violinist Eylem Basaldi, guitarist Aram Bajakian, contrabassist Stéphane Diamantakiou and drummer Ivan Bamford.

The album and accompanying lunar calendar and box set of 13 postcards (with art by Sarit Evrani, designed by Dan Levi) are available for purchase at ayeletrose.com and ayelet.bandcamp.com.

For more about Gottlieb, see “A life of music-poetry” (2019) and other articles on jewishindependent.ca.

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.

From earth to the heavens

Ayelet Rose Gottlieb will perform Shiv’a at Performance Works on Feb. 20. (photo by Gem Salsberg)

There are so many levels on which one can experience Ayelet Rose Gottlieb’s music, and her most recent releases are no exception. Shiv’a, which comes out today, is cathartic, simply enjoyable and everything in between. Her other recent release, Gomory, is ethereal and visceral, and everything in between. Two very diverse recordings, they exemplify Gottlieb’s range of talent.

Gottlieb will perform Shiv’a on Feb. 20, 9 p.m., at Performance Works on Granville Island, as part of Winterruption. She will be joined by a Vancouver-based string quartet led by violinist Meredith Bates, and by N.Y.-based drummer Ronen Itzik (originally from Jerusalem), who is coming to Vancouver especially for the performance. The concert is part of a double bill with singer-songwriter Alejandra Ribera.

Shiv’a has been years in the making. Gottlieb began it following the deaths of three close friends, and she has described the work as “a meditation on the process of mourning.”

“I composed the piece between 2007-2010, while I was living between Wellington, New Zealand, New York City and Jerusalem, Israel,” Gottlieb told the Independent. She met the quartet ETHEL in 2009, “and they and percussionist Satoshi Takeshi were very involved in the final stages of the composition process while I was still working on the piece.

“In 2011, we did an Indiegogo crowdfunding effort and, with 75 pre-orders of the album, we were able to fund the recording of the piece in N.Y.C. Since then, I gave birth to three other albums, and three babies, until finally, in 2015, Shiv’a found the right ‘home’ as part of the roster of 482music, a unique record label that features mostly N.Y.- and Chicago-based musicians.”

It was 482music that suggested releasing the recording as an LP rather than a CD. “For me,” said Gottlieb, “releasing music in this format has been a lifelong dream. LPs are my favorite format to listen to music in. I love the warmth of the sound and the physical feeling of holding a record. It also allows for a true feature to the artwork.

image - Noa Charuvi’s painting “Babel,” which Ayelet Rose Gottlieb chose for the cover of Shiv’a. — Noa Charuvi’s painting “Babel,” which Ayelet Rose Gottlieb chose for the cover of *Shiv’a*.

“I chose to use Noa Charuvi’s painting ‘Babel’ for the cover,” she continued, “as it seems to me to portray beautifully what I was trying to convey with the music of Shiv’a – something is broken, but that fragility holds much beauty, becomes abstract, allows for the imagination to roam. What was there before that is now lost? What will come in place of these ruins? What work needs to be done in order to clear the mess and rebuild? These same sentiments are found in Yehuda Amichai’s poem ‘An Old Toolshed,’ which serves as the epilogue to Shiv’a.”

When the Jewish Independent spoke with Gottlieb just over a year ago about her album Roadsides (“Music is the poetry of life,” Jan. 9, 2015), the Vancouver-based musician, who has called various places home, said she was still looking for her language here in the city. “I think this is an ongoing search,” she said when the JI caught up again with her about her two new releases. “I have a band here in Vancouver that I really love working with, though it has been a little while since we last had a gig. It features some of Vancouver’s most creative musicians – Aram Bajakian on guitar, Peggy Lee on cello, Dylan Van Der Schyff on drums and Meredith Bates on violin. Last spring, I composed a new song cycle, ‘12 Lunar Meditations,’ which they performed along with the Voice Over Mind Choir (led by D.B. Boyco) as part of the Western Front’s vocal festival. This was the first substantial piece of music I had composed since I moved here, and these musicians, Vancouver and the changes in my personal life, all blended into this composition.”

In addition to writing and performing her own material, Gottlieb forms part of the Mycale quartet, the group that recorded Gomory, part of John Zorn’s Masada project.

“John Zorn’s Masada project has been ongoing for over 25 years and has become a ‘cult’ project with a huge following worldwide,” explained Gottlieb. “These compositions all use the ‘Jewish scale,’ which gives them a klezmer-ish feel with a contemporary edge.

“In his second book of compositions for this project, The Book of Angels, Zorn commissioned different musicians to arrange and interpret his music. Among the musicians who participated in this Book of Angels series of recordings are guitarist Pat Metheny, trumpeter Dave Douglass, saxophonist Joe Lovano and many others. This is a magnificent list of artists for those of us who love jazz.”

And this is where Mycale comes in. Zorn formed the all-female a cappela quartet in 2009.

“We are Sofia Rei from Argentina, Malika Zarra from Morocco, Sara Serpa from Portugal (who joined the band in 2013 in place of Basya Schechter) and myself, from Israel,” said Gottlieb. “We all are band leaders and composers of our own individual projects and bring our musical styles into our arrangements of John Zorn’s music. We sing in Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Berber and French. John Zorn invited us to record two albums for this special series of recordings. The first was released in 2010 – Mycale: Book of Angels, Vol. 13 – and the latter was released in May of 2015, Gomory: Book of Angels, Vol. 25. We feel very honored to have been invited to participate in this incredible series, and especially to tour with Mr. Zorn globally as part of his Masada Marathon performances, which took us all over the world – Europe, Canada, U.S.A., Australia and South America.”

All of Zorn’s compositions in this work, added Gottlieb, are titled after angels and demons. “Gomory is a demon who disguises himself as a beautiful woman riding a camel,” she explained.

As for current and future projects, Gottlieb said, “My primary project right now is my family. My third little girl was born just one month ago, so we are all in search of a new rhythm to dance by. Other than that, I recently recorded a duo album (which is still in the works) with my longtime collaborator, pianist Anat Fort. I am hoping to keep performing and developing my new piece ‘12 Lunar Meditations,’ which, following the Vancouver debut, was performed in N.Y.C. last fall with some remarkable participants, including legendary jazz-vocalist Jay Clayton. I am working on some new collaborations here in Vancouver, which hopefully I’ll be able to share with you soon.”

In addition to the Feb. 20 concert at Performance Works, Gottlieb and Itzik will be giving a workshop at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver (604-257-5111) on Feb 21, 2 p.m. Open to all, the cost to attend is $15 per person.

For more on Gottlieb and to purchase Shiv’a, Gomory or other of her recordings, visit ayeletrose.com.

Music is the poetry of life

Local jazz musician Ayelet Rose Gottlieb happily juggles music and babies. “You have to have music, right? Music is life. It’s a necessity. And you have to have kids.” Gottlieb just released her fourth album, Roadsides, and her adorable six-month-old twins, a boy and a girl, don’t slow her down one bit.

photo - Ayelet Rose Gottlieb plays songs from her new album Jan. 16 — Ayelet Rose Gottlieb plays songs from her new album Jan. 16. *(photo from Ayelet Rose Gottlieb)*

The music for all the songs on Roadsides was written by Gottlieb, with lyrics from work by various Israeli and Palestinian poets. “This project accumulated for a long time,” she told the Independent. “There’s lots of pain in Israel now, and nationalism is growing. It’s hard for me. Israel is my country. My mother’s family has lived there for 20 generations. All that time, there was a cultural interchange between Palestinians and Jews. It’s almost gone now.”

She feels that Israel today is missing a bridge between cultures, the connection that was flourishing even in her grandfather’s days. “People of all backgrounds love this land. I believe that it is possible to elevate beyond the hurts of the past decades. We should try to restart the intercultural conversation. The poets I chose for the songs on this album represent such diversity: Israeli and Palestinian, young and old, male and female, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi. In a way, my album is a political statement, that of humanity. We can all coexist in Israel and the more we learn about each other, the more we talk, the better people we are.”

She recalled being a student in Jerusalem at a high school for the arts. “I started writing songs and performing when I was 17. For 10 years, I performed with Arnie Lawrence, the famous American jazz saxophone player. He lived in Israel in the last years of his life, and he became my teacher of jazz. He shaped my thinking. We often performed with Palestinian musicians, both in Israel and Palestine. Music is an international language. With music, you can communicate with anyone. But it was easier then – there was no wall.”

Some of the songs on Roadsides are light and quirky, while others are poignant, driven by emotions. All of them are in Hebrew, either originals or translations from Arabic. “When I compose songs, the text should trigger something inside me,” she explained of her approach. “It doesn’t have to be poetry. It could be a piece of prose, as long as it says something important. The quality of the text is paramount.”

Occasionally, she uses her own lyrics, though not often. She has songs set to passages of artist Wassily Kandinsky’s book on art and Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech. Kandinsky, in particular, fascinated her as a subject, as she used to paint as well as compose. “I don’t do it anymore,” she confessed. “But I hear colors. Certain colors resonate with certain notes. It’s a personal interpretation, of course, when you set music to painting or paint to the music.”

Gottlieb’s songs are multifaceted, flowing around their listeners in audio waves, implying pictures and palettes, even if one doesn’t understand the Hebrew. No surprise then that she has fans all over North America. But her heart belongs to Israel, she said. “I fly to Israel a couple times each year, to perform and to connect with my family.” She also records in a New York studio, as a solo performer and as part of the quartet Mycale.

Musical collaborations increase her audience but also broaden her expressive facilities and add to her musical toolbox. She recorded one of the songs on Roadsides as a duet with Israeli pop star Alon Olearchik. Others, she wrote with particular musicians in mind.

Gottlieb also teaches composition, vocals and improvisation. In Israel, she taught at colleges. Here, she gives private lessons and workshops. “I enjoy working with children and adults, but I prefer adults, mature people who know what they want…. I learn a lot when I teach. Sometimes, I would explain a point to my students, and it would clarify the concept for me too. Students often surprise me. They do something unexpected, and I’d see a new perspective, realize a new way of doing things.”

Moving every few years has also helped to keep her creativity fresh. “We lived in New Zealand for a while, in New York and in the U.K.,” she explained. “Compared with New York, where there are many different cultures, Vancouver has a smaller music scene, fewer people to play for, fewer opportunities and venues. I’m still looking for my language here. Resonating with the place and the community is important, but it’s an interesting exploration and a wonderful place to raise babies.”

As for any parent, her children are an integral part of her life, and she plans to incorporate her music into their upbringing. “I dream of having house concerts at our place when the kids are a bit older. They should be exposed to music and art early. Art is playful. To be an artist, you have to keep some of the child in you alive.”

Gottlieb’s Roadsides CD release is Jan. 16 at the China Cloud on Main Street. To learn more, visit ayeletrose.com.

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