A funny thing happened to Daniel Alpern as his life began to crumble following the death of his father last year. He began to talk to God and to his recently deceased dad as a way of helping him ease his troubled mind — and he got a response.
“I realized my father, for 30 years, said “˜Make an album, publish your music,’” Alpern says.
So with the help of a friend, Alpern did just that; A Moment in Time was released earlier this year as a download from the iTunes store.
People who grew up at Temple B’nai Torah or the Stroum Jewish Community Center will likely know Alpern’s name — he has been using drama as a teaching tool as well as writing songs and plays for children for close to three decades. He spent 10 years doing music and theater at B’nai Torah, and it was through Alpern that the JCC revived its Center Stage theater program in 2009. He left last year after his father’s death.
He wrote plays and music, but these productions were less about the audience and more about the performers — every kid who came had a tailor-made part.
“The key was the kids having fun, and feeling good about what they were able to achieve to their talent level,” Alpern says.
But he never really knew how his career as a playwright affected the kids he worked with until he joined Facebook and began hearing from them. Some had come to his theater as an escape from otherwise troubled lives. Alpern said he heard from one woman who told him, “”˜You gave me an outlet and you talked to me,’” Alpern said. “”˜You let me know that I was okay, that I was good, that even though my father abused me, you helped me see the confidence in myself.’”
It was stories like that, he said, as his own life was crashing down around him, that gave him the confidence and purpose to start making music again — but this time for himself.
“They all said all these wonderful things, and it made my life feel like it had a purpose,” Alpern says.
Alpern says he has written in the neighborhood of 1,000 songs. The music on the album either is based on the plays he has written or, in a couple of cases, on the process of making the record itself. Other songs were rewrites of previous versions.
“I kept stealing from myself,” he says.
After seven months at his keyboard, working from a studio in a house that adjoins Alpern’s apartment, he emerged with A Moment in Time. The process was hard, painful, a learning of the lessons he often gave the kids he worked with, but ultimately cathartic.
He isn’t finished, however. A companion album will feature four alternative versions to songs on this record as well as remastered songs he recorded professionally in the 1980s. He’s also got an album of Jewish rock music kicking around in his head that he may try to take somewhere.
But for now, Alpern’s pulling his life back together, playing weekly gigs, and talking to his old friends on Facebook. He hopes, as he continues to make music, to be able to give back to a Jewish community that has been so meaningful in his life.
“I feel like if I can make it with my music I can give back to the community financially one day, and I can reach people,” he says.
Daniel Alpern’s A Moment in Time can be found online for download at the iTunes Store. He also performs each Friday at The Olde Wine Store on Mercer Island, 7858 SE 28th St., Suite 110, from 6—8 p.m. To join his email list, contact carddude99@hotmail.com.