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Jewish Music in honor of Chinese New Year

There’s the old joke that the Chinese culture has to be older than Judaism -- otherwise, where would Jews have eaten? All laughter aside, the Jewish and Chinese cultures have seen some overlap over the years. Not least of which is Aaron Avshalomov. The Siberian-born composer of operas and symphonic works spent most of his adult life in China, where he was conductor of the Shanghai City Symphony. After the Second World War, he settled in the United States. Here we look at Avshalomov’s Four Biblical Tableaux, which was written in 1928 for the dedication of Temple Beth Israel in Portland, Ore. According to his son, composer Jacob Avshalomov, these tableaux reveal the influence of Chinese music. (Photo credit: infomatique via Flickr)

Volume 01 Preview: Beethoven for Yom Kippur

Forthcoming this February in Volume 01, Jewish Voices in the New World, will be a selection of liturgical settings from the early American Reform movement. Among them will be Frederick Kitziger's O, What Is Man?, which is adapted from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Kitziger, a man of Christian background, was born into a poor family in Germany. He came to America to try his hand at farming (his bride-to-be's father wouldn't allow her to marry a musician), but he began playing music on the street for money after failing to produce a crop. He worked his way into professional situations and eventually became an organist and music director for multiple synagogues in New Orleans, where he composed hundreds of liturgical settings for Sabbath and High Holy Day services. This Milken Archive recording features San Francisco-area cantor Roslyn Jhunever Barak, accompanied on the organ by Barbara Harbach.

Paul Schoenfield: Dancing to a different groove

Aspiring to compose music that "makes people sweat," Paul Schoenfield -- who was born January 24, 1947 -- is a contemporary American composer known for integrating various American and Jewish folk and popular musics with concert music. This is evident in Schoenfield’s Trio for Clarinet, Violin & Piano, which combines influences from eastern European Jewish folk music and Hassidic niggunim with 20th-century idioms reminiscent of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Bartók. Schoenfield’s Tales from Chelm, uses niggunim and Klezmer music to offer a programmatic depiction of the city of Chelm and its fictitious population of the Jewish simpletons. (Photo credit: Jennifer Bong)