Re: Italian Jewish Liturgical Songs in Los Angeles

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

This sounds really neat! Grand work, Francesco (and bring it to Boston).

ari

At 12:46 AM 10/14/2001 -0400, you wrote: 
>
> Dear List,
>
> I am happy to announce that a program I have already presented a number of
> times in Italy, as well as at the Jewish Culture Days in Berlin last year, is
> about to arrive on the American soil. This time it will (only) be in Los
> Angeles, but I hope that others will become interested in the future...
>
> Following the announcement, you can find a few notes that introduce the
> program. The lecture will include an introduction to the music of the Italian
> Jews, as well as some excerpts from the forthcoming CD "Italian Jewish
> Musical Traditions from the Leo Levi Collection (1954-1961), that is, field
> recordings from the 1950's.
> The concert features Italy's most respected hazzan, Elia Richetti, with songs
> from the liturgy of the Sabbath, the High Holidays, the Festivals as well as
> Judeo Italian songs for Passover, and Hebrew piyyutim for Hannukah, Purim,
> Weddings, and so forth in a number of local Italian musical traditions. I
> will be participating to the concert as well, giving the audience the needed
> "subtitles".
>
> I hope to meet some list members at the venue!
>
> Best,
> Francesco
>
>
>
>
> ----------
>>
>>                                    IOHI
>>
>>                                       Italian Oral History Institute
>>                                  www.iohi.org
>>
>>                                                                     
>> presents:
>>                                      Italian Jews: Memory, Music,
>> Celebration
>>
>>                                          Los Angeles, October 24 - November
>> 5, 2001
>>                                                                           
>>                                                                         
>>                                                                        
>>
>>                                              Thursday, October 25, 2001,
>> 7:00 p.m
>>                                      Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel
>>
>>                                                              7:00 - 7:45
>> p.m. L e c t u r e
>>
>>        Feeling Italian and Singing the Bible: National and Jewish Identity
>> in the Music of the Italian Jews             
>>
>>      Francesco Spagnolo Director, Yuval Italia Italian Center for the Study
>> of Jewish Music, Milano, Italy
>>
>>                            
>>                                                                 8:00 - 9:00
>> p.m. C o n c e r t
>>                                           Music of the Italian Jews: 
>> Hazanut from Italian Tradition
>>
>>                                                           Authentic voices
>> from Italian tradition:
>>                                          featuring songs from Milano,
>> Torino, Verona, Gorizia and Trieste
>>                                                                          
>>                                                             sung in this
>> engagement only by
>>
>>                                                                 Cantor,
>> Rabbi Elia Richetti
>>                                                                         
>> (Venice, Italy)
>>
>>
>>                         [Suggested donation $5at the door. First-come,
>> first-served; no rsvp required.]
>>
>>                                                                        
>> Contact: Susan Tobey, Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, 10500 Wilshire Blvd.
>> (corner Wilshire and Warner Ave., Westwood), 310/475-7311. Parking at no
>> charge at Temple or across the street at Westwood United Methodist Church.
>>
>> ----------
>>
>> Musical Traditions of the Italian Jews: It is common to associate the Jewish
>> people with the idea of a cosmopolitan culture, capable of fitting into a
>> variety of contexts, always ready for change. Less well known is the history
>> of Jewish life in Italy and its contribution to Jewish culture and life in
>> its broadest sense.
>>
>> Italian Jews were always very few in number, crowded into the same tight
>> spaces of the Ghettos regardless of their geographic origin. Thus, in the
>> cities of Rome, Venice, Ancona, Ferrara, Livorno, people of the most diverse
>> origins--Spain and Portugal, Central Europe, North Africa and the Middle
>> East--found themselves living together in close quarters.
>>
>> Well before the myth of the melting pot, and definitely before the
>> popularization of "world music," Jews created
>> their own "fusion" in Italian towns and cities. Their music was sung in
>> synagogues--the primary stage of the Jewish world. Melodies created by these
>> means have been orally transmitted to us as a synthesis of different musical
>> worlds. And as they remained unwritten, they were preserved only through
>> human memory over the centuries.
>>
>> Although during the 20th century Italian Judaism decreased in its numbers
>> and in diversification, a fair number
>> of original traditions were preserved by a small number of hazanim, the
>> traditional synagogue cantors. During
>> the last part of the century, the migration of Jews from North African
>> (Lybia and Egypt) and the Middle Eastern
>> (Syria and Lebanon) added an extra layer to the complexity of the Italian
>> Jewish musical world.
>>
>> Over the last four years, Yuval Italia--Centro Studi Musica Ebraica (the
>> Italian Center for the Study of Jewish Music) has been active in researching
>> the diversity of Italian Jewish music, in preserving it, as well as in
>> presenting it to the public through lectures, concerts, as well as via radio
>> and television programs in collaboration with Radio Popolare Milano and
>> RAI-Radiotelevisione Italiana (the Italian national television and radio
>> network).
>>
>> Yuval Italia's director, Francesco Spagnolo, is currently producing an audio
>> anthology of Italian Jewish liturgical songs based on the field recordings
>> of Leo Levi, who documented Italy's own traditions in the 1950's. A
>> forthcoming CD, issued as a joint project of the Accademia Nazionale di
>> Santa Cecilia (Rome) and the Jewish Music Research Centre at the Hebrew
>> University of Jerusalem.
>>
>> This programís musical presentation will introduce the audience to a variety
>> of synagogue songs from the repertoire of the Italian Jews. During the
>> evening, Rabbi and Cantor Elia Richetti will perform a selection of
>> Bible readings, prayers and piyyutim (liturgical poems) still in use today
>> in several Jewish communities
>> throughout Northern Italy.
>>
>> Rabbi and Cantor Elia Richetti, for many years deputy chief rabbi of the
>> Milano community, and recently appointed as chief rabbi in Venice, is a
>> veritable "thesaurus" of Jewish tunes from Northern Italy. He is deeply
>> familiar with the repertoires of Milano, Torino, Verona, Gorizia and
>> Trieste, and his cantorial skills are well known throughout the country. A
>> genuine representative of Italian hazanut, he has been collaborating with
>> Yuval Italia on a number of occasions, presenting his repertoire at the
>> Milano and Bologna Universities, as well as participating in the "Sacri
>> Suoni" (Sacred Sounds), a Milano-based Festival of Liturgial music, together
>> with some of the best hazanim of various traditions from Eretz Israel. In
>> November  2000, he sang at the "House of World Cultures" in Berlin, at the
>> closure of the Jewish Cultural Days.
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
>> YUVAL ITALIA      Centro Studi Musica Ebraica
>> the  Italian Center for the Study of Jewish Music
>>
>> via della Guastalla,19            20122 Milano Italy
>> tel/fax +39 02 55014977    yuval (at) powerlink(dot)it                  
>>            http://www.powerlink.it/yuval
>> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
>

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