Talk for Shabbat Shirah 2015

Here's the text of the talk I gave to introduce the Shabbat Shirah service at Temple Emanu-El last night. I did run my recorder but I haven't had chance to listen to any of it yet. If it's presentable I hope to post at least my pieces here eventually.

(begin talk)

Good evening. Shabbat Shalom!

Before I begin I’d like to say a special thank you to Marjorie; in addition to her beautiful singing she found and assembled the many disparate pieces of the service tonight. I’d also like to extend my gratitude to all the musicians for their hard work and cheerful attitudes in preparing the music.

Tonight’s service celebrates that moment when the people led by Moses stood on the far shore of the Red Sea and watched the waters swallow up Pharoh’s army. They sent up a great cry and a song of thanks to god, with dancing and singing led by Miriam and Moses.

(There’s a great bit of midrash that means a lot to me after a lifetime of being told that me and “my kind” are not part of “god’s kingdom”: The midrash says that when the people began their celebrating the angels started to sing out as well, but god said “No, stop, for those being destroyed are part of my creation, too.”)

This portion has been an excuse across the ages for services filled with beautiful music. In that spirit we have music tonight that spans over five hundred years.

Our oldest composed music tonight comes from the Italian Renaissance composer, Salomone Rossi. He was born around 1570 and attracted early attention as a talented violinist. He was hired by the court in Mantua where he was so highly thought of that he was excused from wearing the yellow badge that other Jews in Mantua were forced to wear. He was a contemporary of Monteverdi and his secular instrumental and vocal compositions were highly thought of in his lifetime. He also composed many settings for Jewish liturgical use. We’re singing his Bar’chu and Mi Chamocha tonight.

Aminadav Aloni was born in Tel Aviv in 1928 and came to New York City to study at Juilliard and New York University. He was a fine pianist and composer of secular music but around 1970 he began writing more identifiably Jewish music. He moved to the Los Angeles area and worked for the film and television industry in addition to writing symphonic and vocal music on Jewish themes until his death in 1999. Tonight we’re singing his Ahavat Olam.

Robbie Solomon is a cantor and composer in the Boston area and has been known with his group SAFAM for many years. He’s written formal service settings and more pop-flavored music and has recorded several albums. We’re using one of his more formal (but still very jazzy) settings of Yismechu.

Marcello Gindlin was born in the late nineteen-sixties and raised in Buenos Aires and is currently serving as cantor at the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue. His training and experience include music therapy in addition to cantorial and compositional work. He’s the composer of the fun tango-style setting of V’shamru that the Marjorie and the choir have been singing recently. We’re not doing that one tonight, but we are using his setting of the Candle blessing.

I was surprised to find out that our final composer tonight is not the youngest person on the list. He was born in Phoenix a year or so before Cantor Gindlin in Argentina, and formally educated in the midwest at a state school in Pennsylvania and did graduate work at Indiana University. He moved around several cities working in theater and sacred music as well as jazz and classical before settling in Tucson in the late 1990s. I think it’s safe to say though, that his music has to be just about the freshest of any you’ll hear tonight, since some of the piano parts were completed just yesterday.

Yeah, okay, I’ll drop the conceit. It’s me.

I’ve written four new pieces for the service tonight, all part of a proposed larger setting of the Shabbat evening service. (If you know anybody who wants to commission the larger work, let me know.) Just like much of Judaism springs from the central statement of the Sh’ma, all of the other pieces are developed out of the themes and harmonies stated in that setting. L’cha Dodi, Tzadik Katamar, and Hashkiveinu are all musical variations on the Sh’ma.

We’re also singing a piece I wrote a couple of years ago to fill a hole in a holiday concert by a community chorus I was conducting at the time. It’s intended for Hanukkah and talks about lighting candles in the “cold of winter” while waiting for the warmth of summer to return. This wintry theme is interspersed with a setting of Oseh Shalom that I wrote for this choir in 2011. In the spirit of the midrash I mentioned earlier (and with the suggestion of the Siddur from Sha’ar Zahav, the Golden Gate temple in San Francisco) I added the words “val kol haolam” to the request for peace for the people of Israel, so that peace may be extended to the entire world.

Until everyone knows peace, no one can know peace.

Shabbat Shalom.

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Location:N Country Club Rd, Tucson