Last night we collaborated with the cantorial students of Hebrew Union College on a concert featuring the music of Cantor Gershon Ephros. While we've been rehearsing the choral portion of the concert for the past month, the concert itself marked the first time I had the opportunity to see everyone perform their solo pieces. Hearing an eclectic collection of works by Ephros gave me a greater appreciation for his contributions to liturgical music (he is best known for creating the very first cantorial anthology). We had a nice crowd for this (free) concert, featuring students from both seminaries as well as members of the community.
This weekend is also the Hamshushalaim festival, a three weekend-long smorgasbord of cultural events meant to promote Israeli tourism. It basically means that the entire city of Jerusalem abounds with free concerts. Since our concert was over by 9pm, a group of us walked over to the Italian Synagogue for an art song recital featuring music by Tosti. The hall was beautiful but unfortunately very small -- so small in fact, that we were standing in a big crowd towards the back!
After a few songs, we decided to head over to another free concert at the Shrine of the Book, home of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The concert featured an incredible a cappella choir conducted by Judy Axelrod, my voice teacher here in Israel (Side note: I'm SO happy that I managed to find such a great voice teacher here ). The music spanned classical, Israeli, and popular genres, and included a hilarious madrigal-style rendition of the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love" as well as a very talented countertenor singing Purcell's "Music for Awhile" (a baroque art song). But the best part about the concert was definitely the venue itself. It was neat to be sitting amongst some of the oldest known biblical documents -- not to mention the fact that it had magnificent acoustics!
While there's definitely a part of me that misses all of the cultural events in New York, I suppose I can't complain that I managed to participate in or hear three very different concerts in one evening here in Jerusalem!
Oh, and one more thing I forgot to mention: Throughout the course of the evening, I was toting around a bottle of "etrogcello" -- a version of the Italian liquor limoncello made with etrogs leftover from Sukkot. To make etrogcello, I grated etrog rinds and let them steep in vodka for a little over a month. Then I added a simple sugar syrup, let that sit for a few days in the vodka mixture, and -- voila! The result was a delicious treat that I shared with my classmates to celebrate after the concert. Some people thought it was too sweet, some thought it was too strong, but the overall consensus was that it was tov meod (that's "very good" in Hebrew -- although I kinda think the Italian "molto bene" is more approrpriate in this instance). The etrog added a unique flavor, and I think I might try to make this an annual post-Sukkot tradition.
The funny thing is that I had to enter many security checkpoints throughout the evening to get into all of the concerts, and not one person batted an eye at the fact that I was blatantly carrying around an open bottle of alcohol. That would totally not fly in America! :)
Oh, and one more thing I forgot to mention: Throughout the course of the evening, I was toting around a bottle of "etrogcello" -- a version of the Italian liquor limoncello made with etrogs leftover from Sukkot. To make etrogcello, I grated etrog rinds and let them steep in vodka for a little over a month. Then I added a simple sugar syrup, let that sit for a few days in the vodka mixture, and -- voila! The result was a delicious treat that I shared with my classmates to celebrate after the concert. Some people thought it was too sweet, some thought it was too strong, but the overall consensus was that it was tov meod (that's "very good" in Hebrew -- although I kinda think the Italian "molto bene" is more approrpriate in this instance). The etrog added a unique flavor, and I think I might try to make this an annual post-Sukkot tradition.
The funny thing is that I had to enter many security checkpoints throughout the evening to get into all of the concerts, and not one person batted an eye at the fact that I was blatantly carrying around an open bottle of alcohol. That would totally not fly in America! :)
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