Beyond Bim-Bam: New Directions in Jewish Music

The Jewish Music Foundation invites you to share in the joys of our most ambitious project to-date. We are excited and hard at work preparing for "Beyond Bim-Bam: New Directions in Jewish Music," a truly eye and ear opening two-week festival, with performances, lectures and workshops in the City and the Valley. Mark your calendars now for festival events. You will notice that tickets for each program are available from the respective venues - it is not possible to subscribe to the festival as an entity.

Beyond Bim-Bam takes as its philosophical point of departure the comfort music of Chassidic "bim-bam" and klezmer, and explores diverse pathways into fresh and stimulating new works. Music by some of the most creative minds in recent Jewish music, including Pulitzer Prize winning composers Shulamit Ran (1992) and Henry Brant (2002) will be presented. And unforgettable performances will be served up by L.A.'s finest musicians plus stellar guests from the East Coast.

The festival offers a range of work, from Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's hauntingly beautiful Three Sephardic Songs (1959) for mezzo-soprano and harp, to the spatial sonorities of Henry Brant's Prophets (2001) for four cantors and shofar at Temple Aliyah. Betty Olivero visits us from Israel to speak about her klezmer-infused live score for the 1920 German Expressionist silent film "Der Golem", followed by a film "performance" at the Skirball Cultural Center. Also at the Skirball, Steve Reich's seminal 1981 masterpiece Tehillim (Psalms) weighs in, along with other cutting edge offerings from CalArts. At Adat Ari El, sensuous tango and soulful klezmer give way to new expressions of both genres with Yiddish tangos and chamber works by the Argentinian American giants, Astor Piazzolla and Osvaldo Golijov.

Then probe more deeply and hear what the composers have to say about their art at the fringe - Tsitsit - events. Visiting composers Betty Olivero (Jerusalem), Yehudi Wyner (Brandeis University) and David Lefkowitz (UCLA) will discuss their aesthetics and share their compositional insights in public forums at UCLA.

Jewish Music Foundation is a tax-exempt non-profit 501(C)3 arts organization, established in 1986 in order to present and promote concerts of new and unusual Jewish music through public performances. Concerts focusing on specific composers (Lazar Weiner/Yehudi Wyner, about which the Los Angeles Times commented that Los Angeles audiences needed to hear more of this music), women composers, music by early 20th century Russian Jewish composers (the "St. Petersburg Group"), early music (with the Boston Camerata), etc., engaged and enlightened local audiences. Building on the popular and critical successes of these concerts, the Beyond Bim-Bam festival will expand the opportunities for audiences in both breadth and depth.

We welcome your patronage of these programs and encourage you to make additional contributions so that Jewish Music Foundation can continue to present progressive Jewish music concerts to Southern California audiences.