Maestro Joseph Milo and spinto-soprano Sharon Azrieli Perez both love Jewish music, and they agree that what defines it is not necessarily Jewish authorship.
Their April 8 concert Song of Songs at Congregation Chevra Kadisha-B’nai Jacob proves their point.
Described as “a Jewish symphonic experience,” it combines the work of such Jewish composers as Naomi Shemer, Paul Ben-Haim, Leonard Bernstein, Jerry Bock and others, along with that of non-Jews Giuseppe Verdi, Sergei Prokofiev (Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op. 34) and Max Bruch who was Rhenish-Catholic yet composed the traditional Kol Nidre heard in every synagogue. It will be interpreted in this concert by world-renowned cellist Matt Haimovitz.
Also on the program is John Williams’ Schindler’s List, which captured every Jewish heart, and a work by a Jew who converted to Catholicism, Gustav Mahler.
“I’m doing Mahler’s third movement from the First Symphony, which is as close to klezmer as can be. It shows you that if anybody had any doubt that Mahler was Jewish, it’s proof he retained a pintele yid,” says Milo, who will conduct the Musicians of the World Symphony Orchestra (MWSO).
The Chevra stage in Singerman Hall will be extended 10 feet to accommodate all 50 instrumentalists.
The MWSO itself is an agglomeration of talent from around the globe, founded in 2006 when Israeli-born Milo discovered that his doorman had been “first cellist in the Moscow Symphony, and the pizza delivery guy told me he had been a violinist with the Bucharest Opera. Our orchestra gave back artists like them their professional dignity.”
A Romanian clarinetist and a Hungarian violinist from the group will perform solos during the program. The klezmer band Kleztory, none of whom are Jewish, ends the evening on a joyous note. Their soulful playing of Jewish music earned them the Fürth Klezmer Prize in 2012.
Azrieli Perez, who will be singing Max Janowski’s signature Avinu Malkeinu among other offerings, will also demonstrate how Verdi was influenced by Jewish music.
She juxtaposes the Ladino Scalarica with La Traviata’s Addio, del passato, demonstrating their startling similarity.
“It was the subject of my doctorate thesis in vocal performance which leads me to the subject of my Azrieli Prize in Jewish Music because everybody says to me, ‘What is Jewish music?’ We are asking people to write new classical music, art music about the Jewish experience, about the Jewish religion using fragments of the prayer modes or the lexicon of cantorial music or klezmer,” she says.
“I want to reach out to any composer. You don’t have to be Jewish.”
Azrieli Perez is on her way back from her appearance with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in Israel. There, actor Richard Dreyfuss narrated Leonard Bernstein’s Kaddish for a special concert in memory of her father, David Azrieli.
The Song of Songs concert at the Chevra, sponsored by the Azrieli Foundation and the synagogue, is also a tribute to the late architect, real estate developer and philanthropist, who passed away in July.
“My father brought me up on the songs of Naomi Shemer. He escaped the Holocaust to Israel,” Azrieli Perez says. “After he moved to Canada in 1954, he always considered himself to have two homelands.”
This concert unites both of his beloved countries with Jewish music, a mix of folk, klezmer, classical, Israeli, Ladino, Broadway and cantorial.
Following the Chevra evening, Azrieli Perez is off to Sicily to sing Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana. Then she performs with the McGill Chamber Orchestra on June 9.
Milo, ever an equal-opportunity employer, is planning to invite the best of the city’s street buskers to play for an evening with the orchestra, “something they wouldn’t imagine in their wildest dreams.”
For tickets to the Song of Songs concert, call Sara at 514-482-3366, ext. 224.