NAJCF 2006

NAJCF

Ok.. I've been asked to post.. I haven't been posting...but I guess i have a few things to discuss. Light topic first in this post.I spent the last week at the North American Jewish Choral Festival.

Four days of singing, eating, singing, eating... endlessl oop. We have morning "community sings", where a different conductor every day (or 2 or 3) gets up and teaches us a new piece. sometimes the pieces are newly composed (and the composer may be the one teaching it) or its an old piece (often one I know already), or a folky tune or whatever. We also are split into "instant ensembles" - depending on our self-perceived abilities. I always choose Eleanor Epstein who conducts Zemer Chai in Wash. DC - she is very folky and spiritual - she even said that "in a perfect world" there would be no "audience" and no "stage", but I guess she makes do! She warms us up by teaching us a tune - something we can sing over and over and put in our own harmonies.. she is like the ultimate song leader and reminds me of someone you'd want to have as a camp counselor. She can be very funny and while I know she and Josh are very good friends - their style is very different, which is why I like her. Eleanor conducts the "twos" - those of us who have said we are very good sight readers. The "ones" usually go with Mati Lazar, who did a new piece by Yehezkel Braun which was I guess 80 pages long!

Jill and I could easily be in his choir but we choose not to be. Her husband Larry does it because he's a tenor and they need him. Mati is the "anti-Eleanor"... He is the NAJCF founder. Anyway, the high points for me are always the morning sings - the chance to learn new music, and the evening performances by other choirs - some are there for the week, and some come up just to sing.

I also enjoy being part of the Leon Sher lobby sing-along fan club. He had his guitar out w/in minutes on Sunday night and they were singing through every song that driver knew.. LOL... camp songs, hebrew songs, Leon's songs, etc. Wed. night he did broadway at the piano - he started doing JC Superstar - I said it was my favorite but didn't think it was appropriate to ask for it - he said it was his too. I've never really talked to him much although he's been seeing me there year after year. This time we had evening entertainment all three nights, which was great. We had the Robin Helzner Trio the first night, Debbie Friedman (yes, THE Debbie Friedman - she of controversy - is her music "Jewish? Are people using it to replace "Nusach"? ) It was a Debbie Freidman Love Fest - I mostly only know her music because of attending the festivals. Then on Wednesday night we had a man I'd never heard of named Josh Nelson.. He does Jewish GOSPEL -- it was good but wierd. He is an Ethiopian Jew and grew up Jewish and tosses off all the Jewish phrases and all but there was something odd about it. I took some video with Eden's digital camera which came out really well. The choral festival can be cliquey - people see each other year after year. I tended to sit for meals with Marilyn, Jill, Larry, Francene and Scott or some variation of them... Josh sat next to me at dinner the first night and we actually talked about non-zamir stuff - it was interesting. I told him how my mother used to sing and how I got my voice from her and all that... he wasn't with Ronda, and wasn't with his peeps at that time and actually chose to sit down next to us. I felt like he wasn't being patronizing to me for a change. he usually just smiles at me and says "having a good time?" which annoys me.. I'm not in the inner circle of trusted advisors.But it was fun and on the way home we stopped in New Palz for lunch and walked around so I got home very late Sunday night. Ok well that is how I spent my summer vacation. And I don't want to go back to work. That's the next post.

Current Location: home at the computerCurrent Music: none