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"The Basketball Game" is a graphic novel adaptation of the award-winning National Film Board of Canada animated short of the same name – intended for audiences aged 12 years and up. It's a poignant tale of the power of community as a means to rise above hatred and bigotry. In the end, as is recognized by the kids playing the basketball game, we're all in this together.

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Tag: Harriet Frost

Frost album release

Frost album release

Harriet Frost and the Universal Band (photo from Harriet Frost)

image - Harriet Frost and the Universal Band logoHarriet Frost and the Universal Band are holding an album release party on April 15, 8 p.m., at Or Shalom. The Universal Band is Martin Gotfrit (strings, vocals), Wendy Rubin (keyboard, flute, vocals) Andréas Kahre (percussion, cello) and Noah Gotfrit (basses). Tickets – for the live show and for the stereo livestream on YouTube – are available from eventbrite.ca.

– Courtesy Universal Band

Format ImagePosted on April 14, 2023April 12, 2023Author Universal BandCategories MusicTags CD release, Harriet Frost
Much going on for songwriter

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.

Format ImagePosted on September 20, 2019September 17, 2019Author Sam MargolisCategories MusicTags Harriet Frost, Israel, Jacob's Ladder
Learning, fun at Limmud cabaret

Learning, fun at Limmud cabaret

Moishe House (and friends) show off their “Most Jewish Table” certificates. From left to right are Alexei Schwartzman, Benjamin Groberman, Carol Moutal, Jordan Stenzler, Shayna Goldberg and Kevin Veltheer.  (photo by Robert Albanese)

photo - Limmud Vancouver’s Saturday night cabaret included a flash mob, music and Havdalah
Limmud Vancouver’s Saturday night cabaret included a flash mob, music and Havdalah. (photo by Robert Albanese)

Music. Storytelling. Video. Flash dance. These were just some of the elements in Limmud Vancouver’s first-ever Saturday night cabaret, which took place on Jan. 31, the night before the all-day learning festival.

One hundred and sixty people gathered around tables of food, books and Havdalah candles in a transformed Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver auditorium, awash in colored lights and humming to the music of Sulam. The event, co-produced by JCCGV and LimmudVan ’15, brought a cabaret of storytelling (Shoshana Litman of Victoria and local raconteur Michael Geller), drama (Michael Armstrong of Victoria’s Bema Theatre), songs (singers Harriet Frost and Wendy Rubin), Talmud (Tracy Ames), a quiz show (former Vancouverite Adam Growe), Havdalah (Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan), dancers (led by Nona Malki) and lots of good food.

photo - Havdalah at the LimmudVan cabaret
Havdalah at the LimmudVan cabaret. (photo by Robert Albanese)

A highlight of the evening was an inter-table contest of personal Jewish experiences: Who has climbed Masada? Who attended Camps Miriam or Hatikvah? Who speaks Ladino? etc. The winners, a group of Moishe House residents and friends, beat the opposition in a spirited event that included spontaneous renditions of Adon Olam, and were proclaimed “Most Jewish Table.”

Format ImagePosted on February 13, 2015February 13, 2015Author Limmud VancouverCategories LocalTags Adam Growe, Harriet Frost, JCCGV, Laura Duhan Kaplan, Limmud, Michael Armstrong, Michael Geller, Moishe House, Nona Malki, Shoshana Litman, Tracy Ames, Wendy Rubin
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