SAN DIEGO – Talent and technology will be put on display at 5 p.m., PST, Sunday, Dec. 6, when the San Diego Jewish Men’s Choir posts on line its ten-track legacy album featuring songs in Ladino, Hebrew and Yiddish. The free concert, accompanied by a Power Point presentation, will be carried on the choir’s Facebook page, which may be accessed via this website.
The choir averages between 20-30 male vocalists, who are just like “brothers” to the choir’s director, Ruth Weber. Wearing freshly pressed black suits, they are shown on the cover of the accompanying Legacy booklet standing on the serpentine pathway that leads to the top of Masada in Israel. Notwithstanding the blowing sands common to the Judean Desert, there’s not a speck of sand on any of their suits. The reason is that image was digitally manipulated; the choir members actually posed in front of a green screen in San Diego and a Photoshop artist superimposed them on the Masada pathway.
That was not the only example of technical wizardry. The ten songs on the album were recorded in studio over the last five years, but other projects went first, including the choir’s recent “Kochi” album, which was the subject of a dinner and a concert when it was revealed in the pre-pandemic era.
Weber contacted musicians around the world to lay down tracks that could be combined by an audio engineer with the voices of the men’s choir. Weber sent notations to the musicians at which point or bar she wanted them to come in with musical accompaniment. “We added on an accordion, clarinet, saxophone, drums, and bass,” said Weber, who herself supplied the piano accompaniment. “The hardest thing was a santur to accompany one of the Ladino songs. The Jewish santur has a different sound than the Indian one does. As it turned out, there was a really good santur player in Rancho Bernardo. That was the last musician we were waiting to find.”
One advantage of making a CD during the pandemic from a cost-savings standpoint was that the musicians “were out of work so we got way-better prices than we usually would from musicians,” Weber said. “Some of the musicians were symphony players; they were just bored with nothing to do. So they said ‘Sure, we’ll lay down something for $50 a track, which is unheard of!”
Three different Jewish languages were selected for the “Legacy” album because “the mission of our choir is to preserve and promote historical Jewish music so we keep it alive. We wanted to have an equal mixture of Ladino, Hebrew and Yiddish so that we could expose audiences to all of them and have a variety. It’s three of each, with Yiddish having one extra one.”
As many as 10 members of the choir have small solos, with Cantor Larry Kornit of Congregation B’nai Tikvah having an even longer one, she said. The songs selected for the CD “were stylistically very different, some liturgical songs and folk songs, and the album comes with a booklet with the history of each.”
The songs are Ale Bider (“All Brothers”); Bameenan! (“Heaven Forbid!); El Rebe Elimelech, (“The Rabbi Elimelech”); Durme, Durme (“Sleep, Sleep”); Dire Gelt (“Rent Money to Pay”); Chiribim, Chirbom (The Names of Two Feuding Families); Ki V’Simcha (“For You Shall Go Out in Joy”); Los Biblicos (“The Nightingales”); Haleluya Beitsilselei Shema (Psalm 1500); and Adon Olam (“Master of the Universe).
“Chiribim, Chiribom” makes reference to both Purim and Chanukah, Weber said, so it’s fair to say that the album would make an appropriate Chanukah gift. It sells for $12.99 and may be ordered on Amazon.
The album is narrated by choir member Shaun Edelstein.
Asked what it is like conducting 30 guys, Weber responded, “It’s fun, they are all like brothers; they joke around like they were family. I was worried, would they pay attention to me when I first started (about nine years ago), but they do, and it really fun. I grew up with only a sister, so now this is really different having all these guys – all these brothers – I really enjoy it.”
She added, “The music we do is pretty uplifting and fun, so there is plenty of room for joking and having fun while we are doing it. Our songs have ‘choralography’ along with it – that’s a newer term for when you have movement while the choirs are singing. A lot of our Yiddish songs you act out, like when you are paying the rent in ‘Dire Gelt.’ There are some that we have pretty good dance moves!”
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com