I did not know that he knew music, any music except
cantorial prayers, let alone classical music.
The performance showcases the deep, quavering caws and
cantorial melodies of Japanese traditional singers -- whose voices convey the excitement of battle and the despair of suicide in their tonal shifts.
Six of the 32 participants were Cuban-born, including Michael Mandel, a
cantorial student who performed concerts of Jewish songs for the Cuban community.
As a solo musician, Noah has released two full length albums and songbooks entitled 'Am I Awake' and 'Left Side of the Page.' Music from these albums are now sung in progressive communities and summer camps worldwide and has been included as part of the
Cantorial curriculum at the Hebrew Union College's Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music in New York City.
The works that she explores are experimental in their overall soundworld and yet most of them employ direct allusions to traditional Jewish musics--klezmer, the
cantorial tradition, modes associated with Jewish music, and quotations from Jewish songs (the Jewish national anthem "ha-Tikvah" frequently appears in the pieces discussed by Barzel).
Opportunities include a joint degree with rabbinical ordination (LA and NY) and
cantorial ordination (NY); a joint Master's in Jewish Nonprofit Management; Ph.D.
But these contributions, however significant, sublimated their Jewishness in order to appeal to mainstream tastes: the
cantorial throbs of George Gershwin or the melancholic cadences of Irving Berlin were muffled by the swish of Fred Astaire's tailcoat; Louis B.
All of the prayers are sung and clearly enunciated by the veteran Professor of
Cantorial Studies Rabbi Michael Dushinsky.
The editor, Jonathan Friedmann, has contributed an essay entitled, "Humility, Prayer, and the
Cantorial Ideal." Friedman seems to profess (and sadly he is not alone) that aesthetic values are antithetical to the values of sincerity and humility in prayer.
When religious sources are drawn upon, like
cantorial singing or Yiddish Hasidic foil songs, their appeal is basically as cultural artifacts.
This service will be led by Rabbi Bellows, Rabbi Prass,
Cantorial soloist Heather Aranyi, and Kavannah.