Ha Tizmoret HaAndalusit Ashdod

We akways look forward to performances of this Israel-prize winning orchestra. But this week's concert lacked the energy that is such a great part of their appeal. And where was the kanoun? Instead they had an electronic keyboard. The single oud was, in most pieces, overwhelmed by the massive strings. Not a bad concert, but not up to standard.

Copyright 2018 JaneS. Fox

From Tunisia to Jerusalem and the Mahgreb

Last Thursday's concert at Confederation House was what we particularly like -- a bit of family history and a lot of North African music. I was particularly happy that I recognized the first tune. Not that I know its name, and I certainly could not sing it for you, but I knew I had heard it before. I was also pleased that when they played a new melody to words I know (such as Ya Ribon), I heard the music as a melody and could sing along. To be sure, the rest of the audience certainly knew the words and music and carried me.

The night before, at Beit Avi Chai, we had also heard north African music, from a slightly wider area. This, too, was a delightful concert. We were pleased to see such a variety of ages in the audience from primary-school kids to aged grandparents.

Copyright 2018 Jane S. Fox

Oud

The Confederation House is a good lace to find eastern music. Last Thursday we went to a concert in which a Mroccan old player wh o studied with an Iraqi master played that graceful instruument with his ensemble f accordionist, two percussionists, bass fiddler and kanonist. Wonderful.

Beit HaConfederatsia also holds a vegetarian restaurant (no fish) with vegan dishes marked.

Copyright 2017 Jane S. Fox

David D'or and Sassi Keshet

DavidD'or (family from Lybia) and Sassi Kesshet (family from Poland) entertained us Monday evenig at a concert of rather denatured western and eastern Jewish songs. At first, the Sherover Auditorium's sound system distorted D'or's lovely voice, but after a while (perhaps when D'or left the stage for a while he was talking with the sound crew) the reproduction wasbetter. David D'or sounded better last month in the Rivka Crown auditorium. I'd love to hear him in his countertenor range without any amlification.

The familiear and new-to-me songs were mixed with stand-up comedy bits -- much of which was non-PC.

Copyright 2017 Jane S. Fox

Hebrew Music Museum

The Hebrew Music Museum is new and wonderful.

Entry is on Yoel Moshe Salomen, the narrow pedestrian street off Kikar Tsion, which used to be restaurant row and is still worth a walk down. The museum is part of the developing Kikar HaMusika complex.

It is larger than I expected. Although some exhibits do discuss ties to Jewish music, the museum is really about musical instruments, particularly from eastern lands. Your ticket gets you earphones and a tablet. Get the tablet's camera to catch each exhibit's barcode label. You'll see info. Click on the arrow and you'll hear the instrument.

The museum includes an impressive VR of the second temple.

Copyright 2017 Jane S. Fox

Armenian Music

How many people will come to a concert of Armenian music? asked a relative who wondered why I was coing so early to be sure to get a good seat. For this concert, every chair in the room, on the bottom floor of the Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, was full, people sat on the stairs, and at least two people sat on the floor. We were not disappointed.

The four musicians were not Armenian. the ensemble plays music from various cultures in the area using local instruments, fiddles played with slack bows, wooden flutes, exotic drums. The vocalist sang with great beauty and depth, and yet in the folk tradition. I doubt she makes a living doing this. I am surprised there are so many lovely voices are there that this one is not famous.

I seem to remember the museum formerly being called something like, "Art of Islamic Areas," which makes more sense, as Armenia became Christian about 1700 years ago and stayed that way.

Copyright 2017 Jane S. Fox

Two Andalusian Orchestras

Last Sunday we were at a performance of the Ashdod Andalusian Orchestra; this week at a concetrt by the Jerusalem Andalusian Orchestra.

Generally these orchestras, both excellent, perform music, particularly Jewish music, from the Middle East -- mainly north Africa, Iraq, and Syria. Last week we heard a song from a Lebanese musical comedy of the 1950s, Arabic poems set to Arabic music, medeval Hebrew poems set to Arabic music, a modern Hebrew poem set to Israeli bedouin music, a Hebrew poem set to Israeli music in an Arab style, and similar pieces.

The Jerusalem orchestra tried something different: traditional French chanson with the music rearranged into the Andalusian style and rhthyms. Two vocal soloists sang, Ela Daniel much like the usual chanson style while the orchestral went excitedly Andalusian in accompanyment. David D'or was the other soloist, moving from counter-tenor to baritone. Ariel Brant soloed on the harmonica, though with eyes closed I'd have called it a saxaphone.

The conductor of the Jerusalem orchestra is wonderful to watch. He conducts with his entire body, a dancer directing the musicians.

Copyright 2017 Jane S. Fox

Sick Man of Europe

A current temporary exhibit at the Islamic Art Museum http://www.islamicart.co.il/english/ is "The Sick Man of Europe" -- as the late Ottoman Empire was called. It combines photographs of the Turkish army in the Great War, diagrams of destroyed Armenian churches, and a 10-minute film on whose sound track we hear two Armenian composers of the early 20th century discussing music plus a very little bit of music.

We arrived two minutes past noon for the guided tour that started at noon. "Where does the tour start?" we asked the mand selling tickets. "Right over there," he said, pointing across the lobby. After a 10-minute wait we asked again about the tour. "Oh, it's already downstairs." OK, we had not originally asked where it was, and it had indeed started from the lobby.

Another temporary exhimit shows the work of a contemporary watchmaker, Itay Noy. For this the guide was extremely helpful, pointing out the various ways in which each watch plays with time -- with trasparent faces back to back or with faces opposing a city scene to a country scene. Well worth a visit.

Copyright 2017 Jane S. Fox

Myumina

Although Myumina, which we went to last night, is loud and not tuneful, most of the audience was middle age and older and had a grand time. Hugely energetic, its best parts are the sll-cast percussion numbers. Dancing is wonderful. Singing is excellent, though not traditionally tuneful. Great evening.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

La Jolie Parfumeuse

Went to a performance of Offenbach's "Pretty Perfume Seller" at the Jerusalem Acadmey of Music and Dance. Good performance of an operetta with lovely, though forgettable, music and ridiculous plot. As we got off the bus at the Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus and looked around to orient ourselves, a little woman in her mid-70s said, in Hebrew with a thick Russian accent, "You look like you're here for the operetta."

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Old and New

Monday's Etnakhta was a classic mix of classcal and modern, played by the Alexander Trio. Hayden, then Beethoven to start, Schumann to finish. The before-intermission piece from 2006 by Oded Zehavi opened with the usual doom-is-coming atonality (or is that dissonance), but eventually moved into a lovely stretch that seemed to be the composer's assertion that he could write conventional beauty if he wanted to. After intermission Reuben Seroussi's "Ancia" from 2012 opened with violin squeaks and went on incomprehensibly (to me) from there. I could have used a lecture or maybe a year-long music course.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Traditional Music

Shostakovich, Mendlessohn, and Beethoven pleased the audience of Monday's etnakhta concert. The full house, made up mostly of what Israelis all "the third age" and the British call "OAP" (which does not, as I thought when I first saw the term, mean "over-aged persons" but rather "old-age pensioners") thought Shostaakovich quite modern.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Best Customer Service

The best customer service I've come across anywhere is at the Jerusalem Theater box office. The theater has at least five venues offering concerts, plays, stand-up, movies, dance performances, international films, lectures, and anything else you might find on a stage. Those box-office clerks not only know the programs, they also know all the discounts and deals you might be elligle for. You can attend three events for the price of two. Pay now, and choose later. Forget to pring your card when you come in to buy tickets for the third event? They'll find your record for you. You can also get tickets by phone or over the Internet.The box office is very patient, and I've heard them serve customers in three languages. I'd be happy to give any of them a recommendation for a job teaching customer service personnel how to work with customers.

It helps that the products they sell are excellent.

By default all your tickets go on your card. At the door, an usher reads the card and reminds you where your seat is. But what's to remind you that you have an event that day and when? You transferred it to your calendar, didn't you. Well, no. I haven't even tried to get the phone to read the card, though I'm told it can. Fortunately, if you ask, the box office prints you a paper ticket. I don't suppose anyone under 50 asks for that.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Etnakhta

The Monday afternoon Etnakhta consert series has dwindled to every other week. The programs have gotten very expectable, at least what the elderly regulars seem to expect and want. Chamber groups play Mozart and Bruckner. I remember with fondness the assault on my ears of a pre-Muslim Arab chorale and of all the strange sounds a musician can make with a trumpet not to mention several pieces so modern they had no key. These are not forms I'd seek out or ask to hear again, a reason I was happy to have them presented to me just so I'd know what they were.

Copyright 2016 Jane S. Fox

Iolanthe

Encore Theatre's production of Iolanthe was one of the best I've seen and heard. Their articulation was so clear I understood almost every word, including the topical additions never heard before. Like other contemporary productions, this one gave microphones to softer-voiced singers. It worked. Unless you looked for the mic, you couldn't tell which of the principals had them.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Silk Road

The number of people in the audience, and the fact that the event was in the large Sherover auditorium at the Jerusalem Theatre, surprised me. The event was billed as a lecture on and music of the Silk Road. The lecture was interesting. I learned that the term "silk road" dates from the start of the 19th century, that it refers to several different routes from Europe to and from China and from India to and from China, that traffic started during the early Roman Empire and the T'ang Dynasty, that the movement of ideas and culture was as important as the movement of silk and spices. The lecturer included more that added to knowledge I already have.

Then came the music -- enjoyable interesting stuff, but unfortunately not tied to the lecture. We got to China once, but mainly stayed near the Mediterranean. Perhaps I'll find out some day exactly how Chinese music influenced the music that influenced the music of Greece. Never mind. It's music I like.

Wonderful, graceful fiddler. Fantastic percussionist. I think the dancer was the same one we saw a while ago at the Mayer Institute for Islamic Art. No printed programme. No indication of names that I can find on the Jerusalem Theatre website.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Mme Butterfly

The Jerusalem Opera's production of Butterfly was very enjoyable, though Live at the Met has gotten us used to more spectacle and more spectacular voices.

One of the best Butterflys I've seen was the ballet version last year at the Jerusalem Theatre, particularly moving because the protagonist was believable as an 18 year old.

No operatic soprano is 18. When teen or preteen girls sing opera on TV talent shows, we see angry comments about the damage done their voices. Plus, older sopranos are probably better actresses than they were at 18. It is to Yasmine Levi-Ellentuck's credit that by the end of the performance we felt we were watching a naive young woman, barely a woman, making decisions she was not ready for.


Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Harel Stanton said at the lecture (jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/sufi-lectures-and-music.html), which prepared us for the Sufi music and dance concert, that women got up and danced spontaneously at the small gathering he attended before the Rumi Festival in Konya, Turkey. Possibly those dances were similar to the flowing yet enrgy-filled movements of last night's dancer. For her final dance she did the traditional, seemingly impossible, whirling associated with Sufi men.

The musicians were equally good.

Copyright 2014 Jane S. Fox

Adrienne Haan

Adrienne Haan sang Weimar (and slightly later) cabaret songs at last night's rather strange Israel Broadcasting Authority - Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra concert. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuaY2Cd9Cts) The entire second half of the program was hers, mostly with a full orchestra behind her, though two or three songs had only the more-traditional piano accompaniment. She provided a continuity talk in English, part of the strangeness.

Haan is built like a swimsuit model who still competes in swimming matches. Her dressmaker should love her, and her hair (or possibly wig?) stylist is a genius.

Her voice singing these songs was uncannily similar to that of the magnificent Raymonde Abbecassis (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/cultural-differences.html ). I found a description of Haan calling her a "belter." Perhaps that's it.

"Belter" did amuse me. To science fiction readers, a "Belter" is a person who lives between Mars and Jupiter, making a living from asteroid mining.

But none of those exist, while Haan and Abecassis pleasurably do.

Copyright 2014 Jane S. Fox

Cultural Differences

The Israeli Andalusian Orchestra of Ashdod continues to be once of our favorites. Last night's concert reminded us of cultural differences between this orchestra's audience and the audiences at the Etnakhta concerts.

The audience claps along in the rhythm of some of the pieces. They sing along with vocalists. This all adds to the already considerable energy. At the end of each piece, and at concert's end, there's no feeling that you ought to go on applauding until the soloist leaves the stage. They stop applauding and, usually, the soloist walks off as the other musicians gather their instruments and follow.

The audience at last night's concert loved Raymonde Abecassis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75VZQAm1YXQ ). At the end, she stayed on stage, talking to members of the crowd.

Copyright 2014 Jane S. Fox