By Gigi Yellen-Kohn, JTNews Correspondent
What brings a prayer up off the printed page and into the heart? The voice of an inspired singer. “Lift Every Voice and Sing: Celebrating Cultures Through Song,” a unique two-concert series at Town Hall, presents inspired singers from three different Jewish religious traditions and two different African-American church choirs, starting Saturday, March 2, at 8p.m., in a concert called “From the Soul.”
On the program are the Brotherhood Chorus of Seattle’s Mount Zion Baptist Church and the Voices of Praise Choir of Renton’s Martin Luther Jr. Memorial Baptist Church. The mother-daughter duo of Julie and Chava Mirel, popular local cantorial soloists, will offer the contemporary Jewish music. Brothers Izro and Manachem Malakov, chazzanim (cantors) now of Queens, N.Y., natives of Uzbekistan, will present prayers in the Bukharan-Jewish style. Seattle’s Rabbi Simon Benzaquen, who serves the local Sephardic community, will performing both Ashkenazic and Sephardic liturgical compositions.
Julie Mirel’s credits extend from opera to chamber music to musical theater to service as the cantorial soloist of Temple Beth El in Tacoma. Chava Mirel, a songwriter, currently teaches music and participates as a service leader at Temple B’nai Torah in Bellevue, sometimes sharing the bimah with her dad, Rabbi Jim Mirel. They also share the concert stage, where he plays bass and she sings and strums, as part of the Shalom Ensemble. “I’ve learned as much from Chava as she’s learned from me,” Julie confides. “She’s taught me so much about rhythm, and the way she harmonizes, both with her voice and her guitar, is unique. She’s really an incredible musician.”
“I don’t know why it’s not intimidating,” says Chava of the experience of performing with her accomplished mezzo-soprano mother. “She’s always been so loving and supportive.” Chava has centered her music studies on African and Latin music, and will play guitar to accompany the duo’s performance of Yiddish, Ladino and Israeli folk tunes as well as liturgical selections. This summer, she’s off to New York to further develop her singing career.
Like the Jews of Europe, the Jews of Central Asia developed a cantorial style that reflects the music of their neighbors. Listening to a recording of Izro and Manachem Malakov, one hears the stretched pitches and wavering string instruments characteristic of other Asian cultures. The music blends Hebrew and Bukhari words with instruments generally unknown here. Now part of the large Bukharan/Uzbek Jewish community in Queens, New York, the chazzan Izro Malakov learned maqam, a classical song form with Persian and Afghan influences, from his mother, through the oral tradition. The Malakovs will perform Bukharan-Jewish liturgical songs and examples of maqam at the Town Hall concert March 2.
“Music is a unifying thing,” says Rabbi Benzaquen from his office at Sephardic Bikur Cholim Congregation. “In the background of my mind, I appreciate and know that. Also, one of the things I always consider when I perform in a concert — I feel it’s very important — is that our community be exposed to the rest of the city. There’s a vibrant Sephardic Orthodox life here, and I like the idea that we are projected as a beauty, a special essence, and that we follow halachah [Jewish law].” In his early years, Rabbi Benzaquen served as chazzan, performing with a choir in a large Ashkenazic congregation in England. An accomplished artist as both sofer [Torah scribe] and calligrapher, Rabbi Benzaquen was born in Melilla, in Spanish North Africa.
Just as Jewish prayer takes many musical forms, so African-American religious song represents different traditions. Renton’s Voices of Praise Choir, using keyboard strings for this performance, usually includes a B3 organ. Frank Walton, a KRIZ gospel announcer who is the choir’s keyboardist, describes Voices of Praise as “gospel traditional, a contemporary urban sound.” The Renton choir is led by Cedric “Paul” Thomas, musical director, and Sylvia Walton, lead choir director. The Mount Zion Brotherhood Choir, directed by Eugene Ferguson, sings traditional African-American spirituals, hymns and other choral arrangements for a capella choir.
“Both the Jewish and the African-American communities have experienced struggle. Through song you do “˜lift every voice,’” says Town Hall producer Spider Kedelsky, invoking the title of a famous African-American spiritual taken as the name of the concert series. “In both of these traditions, a vocalist sings sacred text or delivers a message to God on behalf of the larger congregation. Both traditions have influenced American popular music through the composers and performers who were steeped in their richness. And both groups have been frequent allies in the struggle in this country for social justice and civil rights, often drawing on their musical traditions as sources of inspiration and support.”
Kedelsky engaged the Mirels and Rabbi Benzaquen after hearing them at the cantorial stage at Folklife. Kedelsky, who lived in Israel as a child, is the son of a mother who fled the Ukraine and the husband of a Shoah survivor’s daughter; he calls Brooklyn “the old country.” Hearing Rabbi Benzaquen, he says, swept him back to his childhood synagogue, where he thrilled to traditional European cantorial chant. In his first career, as a dancer and choreographer, Kedelsky traveled around the world, learning many different cultures. Then he came to Town Hall, which he calls “this extraordinary community cultural center.”
“When we produce, we want to present what others are not,” he says about the Town Hall’s creative programming in general, and in particular, the concept for the series “Lift Every Voice: Celebrating Cultures Through Song.” A colleague suggested the combination of African-American and Jewish music, and Kedelsky jumped at the chance, partly because “for many years I’ve wanted to do a cantorial concert. Now, it’s a very tenuous time, and to bring people from different backgrounds together is especially important.”
“Kol HaKavod [lots of honor] to Spider,” says Julie Mirel, enthusiastic about appearing on a program she sees as “bringing focus to the parallels rather than the differences” among traditions.
The March 2 “From the Soul” concert will be introduced by the Rev. Samuel McKinney, pastor emeritus of Mount Zion Baptist Church. In the Town Hall lobby exhibition space, a new show by the Pacific Northwest African-American Quilters coincides with the concert, and runs through April 15. The second concert in the “Lift Every Voice” series, titled “From the Traditions,” on March 23, features song styles brought to the United States from Central Asia, Croatia, Eritrea, Laos and Norway.
Tickets for each concert are $12 for the general public, $8 for seniors, students and Town Hall members, and $25 for families of up to five with accompanying adult. Tickets may be purchased through Ticket Window, 206-325-6500, or on the Web at www.ticketwindowonline.com.Town Hall is located at 8th Avenue at Seneca, at the base of First Hill, one block east of I-5, near downtown Seattle.