During the nine Friday nights from July 5th through August 30th, we will offer a newly updated version of what has become a great tradition at Rodeph Shalom. Throughout our summer Shabbat services, we will focus on one common theme: the presence of Jewish values in otherwise secular encounters we experience throughout our typical day. During these services, we will explore how Judaism can be relevant to our every day lives. All through our daily lives, we experience events that seem quite ordinary and mundane. Yet, if we really think about these occurences, we can see that many of them are quite extraordinary. The music we hear in our daily lives (wherever you access your music: via radio, satellite, MP3, live, CD, etc.) can be filled with Jewish content, even though the words are quite secular.
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Ani Kinor: The Rodeph Shalom Orchestra
Cantor Erin Frankel
Back in October, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a profile of Yannick Nezet-Seguin, the new music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. I was amazed to learn in the article that Nezet-Seguin spends a lot of his free time listening to music that is not classical. He talked about having a period when he devoured Ella Fitzgerald recordings and then moved on to Sarah Vaughan and Joe Pass. He unwinds by listening to R&B, he loves Jill Scott, and he is able to compare Usher’s early and later music. He described a concert he led in the Netherlands with the Rotterdam Philharmonic where he juxtaposed classical music and techno music for a crowd of 2,500 young people between the ages of 25-35. And the audience couldn’t get enough of the orchestra.
This experience taught Nezet-Seguin that his goal is to “get out of our comfort zone, as long as we play in the best quality possible and the real music that we know.Continue reading
