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“We heard about this project and felt it was a perfect match to the type of projects we create at Mekudeshet,” says the concert honcho.

By BARRY DAVIS
THE JERUSALEM Orchestra East and West will provide the professional backbone for the Shalem concert. (photo credit: ORIT PNINI)
THE JERUSALEM Orchestra East and West will provide the professional backbone for the Shalem concert.
(photo credit: ORIT PNINI)
As we know only too well, Jerusalem has led an eventful life for over three millennia. Practically every militarily beefed up civilization through the mists of time has squabbled over the hilltop-walled location, setting out their cultural stall for a while until some other marauding mob arrived at the gates, and duly battered them and the inhabitants into submission.
That historical ebb and flow is very much in the thematic mix of the Shalem – Harmony of Broken Instruments event due to take place at Gan Mitchell on September 12 (7-9:30 p.m.), as part of this year’s Mekudeshet Festival.
Besides alluding to the latter part of the Hebrew name of the city, shalem means “complete,” which, in turn, invokes thoughts of the flip-side. That references the fractious annals of this troubled yet enchanting sacred spot, and the possibility of healing wounds, and drawing attention to the “imperfections” and ills in these parts. In “Anthem,” on his 1992 album The Future, late iconic singer-songwriter-poet Leonard Cohen sagaciously posited: “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything). That’s how the light gets in.”
Emmanuel Witzthum, presumably, has few problems with that positive take on perceived defects. Witzthum serves as artistic director of the ambitious Shalem venture, which incorporates over 100 players from across the social, cultural and – one assumes – political tracts that make up this multifaceted part of the world.
Witzthum, who put together an impressively diverse and gifted cast for the occasion – including conductor Tom Cohen and his Jerusalem Orchestra East and West troupe – and drew on the expansive musical outlooks of broadly-roaming pianist-conductor-composer Maya Dunietz; Western classically trained Arab pianist-conductor-composer Nizar Elkhater, who also has the sounds of the Middle East coursing through his inventive veins; and rocker Dudu Tassa, who increasingly weaves his Iraqi roots into his offerings.
And if that multi-layered mix wasn’t quite enough to stir the creative pot adequately, to throw up an abundance of challenging curve balls designed to generate something special, for those on the stage and the paying customers seated around the performance area, at the core of the concert concept are a bunch of instruments which, to put it lightly, have seen better days.
“The idea for the project came to us via a similar project that was created in Philadelphia, in which Robert Blackson, curator of the Temple Gallery, led an initiative to collect disused and broken instruments from the musical education centers of the city of Philadelphia that had no budget to fix them,” Witzthum explains. Blackson then entrusted his good intent to the very capable hands of composer David Lang, a contemporary music composer “to create a symphony for them in order to raise awareness to their situation so as to fix them and bring them back to the public music education system.”
THAT WAS back in 2007, and the initiative produced a memorable rendition of Lang’s Symphony for a Broken Orchestra, which included numerous instruments that were well past their prime, high quality instruments and total amateurs seated alongside seasoned professionals.
Witzthum et al. are aiming to achieve a similar level of emotive expression and, as the program’s declared credo puts it, deliver “a tribute concert to Jerusalem, with all its cracks and fissures.
“We heard about this project and felt it was a perfect match to the type of projects we create at Mekudeshet,” says the concert honcho. “Mekudeshet is a multidisciplinary city-specific festival and platform for original artistic creations that resonate, speak with [and] are inspired by Jerusalem.” It is said that art mirrors street-level life. Witzthum sees the forthcoming concert as something of a portrayal of much of what goes into making Jerusalem what it is, and how the seemingly disparate parts can accommodate each other and even fuse. “The idea of creating a massive orchestra from all over the city of Jerusalem, playing on broken instruments as a story connecting the broken instruments and the city from which they came, felt like a perfect fit. The story combined reaching out to the myriad communities in the city and asking them to participate in the project, volunteer or lend their instruments, to bring on board professional and amateur ensembles, orchestras and musicians and bring everyone together into an orchestra such as has never been seen before.”
SINGER-GUITARIST Dudu Tassa marries rock with the Iraqi sounds and rhythms he imbibed from his grandfather and great-uncle, the famous Al-Kuwaiti Brothers. (Credit: DUDI HASSON)
SINGER-GUITARIST Dudu Tassa marries rock with the Iraqi sounds and rhythms he imbibed from his grandfather and great-uncle, the famous Al-Kuwaiti Brothers. (Credit: DUDI HASSON)
That sounds like envelope-pushing gone a little mad, but the commissioned composers were up for it. Dunietz, for one, seems to have maintained a humorous sense of proportion when faced with such a daunting task. When I asked her how one goes about such an assignment, she fired back with more than a soupçon of self-deprecation and downright playfulness: “Gradually, with lots of coffee, cigarettes and fattening snacks.”
It was not only the nature of the task in hand, in terms of the players and the tools available to them. Dunietz says other factors came into play, such as the sheer size of the instrumental personnel and the chosen spot. “The ensemble and location are the starting point, they are the source of inspiration which produce the ideas and the means I employ for composing the work.”
Some composers like to have carte blanche with regard to all aspects of a nascent creation but, while maintaining her free-ranging approach to the commissioned venture, Dunietz is more than happy to get some feedback from the designated venue.
“In general, I really like creating site-specific works,” she notes. “I like to listen to the circumstances and the environment in which the work will take place, to try to understand their essence and to allow my own ideas to flow from them, and to change within them.” True to her free spirit ethos, she enjoys encountering the unexpected as she follows her long and winding road to sonic consummation. “I like letting a place surprise me and take me into new territory. In [Harmony of] Broken [Instruments], as there is such a mass of details, every simple movement can generate a significant effect, so I decided to use very basic and simple gestures which, when they are executed in such a large mass, take on new meaning. For example, rain, which comprises many small individual drops of water.”
FOR WITZTHUM, the September 12 event is fundamentally a case of the sum of the parts, and beyond, scenario.
“We decided to approach not one composer but three for the concert, as we wanted there to be a diversity of musical voices and styles that express the instruments styles and the capabilities,” he explains. “So we approached Dudu Tassa whose approach was to treat the broken instruments from a poetic perspective, the brokennesses of them as an emotional inspiration. Nizar el-Khater composed a piece that is open and invites dialogue between East and West and also sheds a spotlight on individual instruments, while Maya Dunietz composed a work that is more dramatic and theatrical in style, fully embracing the brokenness of the instruments as a celebration.”
THE MEKUDESHET Festival offers a new perspective on Jerusalem and its cultural component parts. (Credit: GIL ROUVIO)
THE MEKUDESHET Festival offers a new perspective on Jerusalem and its cultural component parts. (Credit: GIL ROUVIO)
Dunietz embraces the challenge of creating a work for “flawed” tools and believes we can benefit from listening not only to the sounds they produce, but also their individual subtext.
“I am interested in hearing about the history and the story of the instruments through their voices,” she says, adding that generous room for sonic an emotional maneuver is part and parcel of the chart she wrote for the ensemble. “I left a lot of open space in the score, for the soul of the broken instruments to be revealed to us, and room for the musicians to search within their instruments for their special colorful and interesting sounds.”
That mind-set suggests a different take on the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” line of thought.
“We wish to express three main things to the audience,” Witzthum explains, “that even if a musical instrument is broken, that does not mean it cannot be used anymore or cannot be played on. One just has to be more creative, push their talent and playfulness one level up to find the magic and beauty in what the instrument can do.” Now there’s a positive thought worth mulling over a couple of times.
To paraphrase an old adage, one person’s malfunctioning instrument may be another’s Stradivarius. Witzthum, like his chosen score writers, relates to challenges to be surmounted, and used for the good of all and sundry, rather than to problems. He says he’d like us to perceive “the wonder encapsulated by the broken instruments and those who play on them. We are bringing 120 people to play together original music on a stage, some of whom have never been on a professional stage before – from teenagers to pensioners, from amateurs to professionals, from east to west Jerusalem.” The physical arrangements for the event are also designed to bring everyone into the mind-set fold. “We will seat the full orchestra in 360 degrees around the conductor, and the audience in 360 degrees around the orchestra, to create a sense of intimacy and togetherness,” says Witzthum.
OF COURSE, at the end of the day, concept or no, the public also wants to get its money’s worth. The artistic director takes that into the equation. “We wish to create beautiful music,” he states. “Broken does not mean unusable to us and we have commissioned three incredible composer to demonstrate this.”
Witzthum hopes we enjoy the efforts of the composers and performers, and that we get something of the bigger picture too. “Music has always been a platform to connect people, it breaks down barriers, does not need introduction and can bring people together in joy, despair or inspiration. Thus an orchestra such as Shalem, and the message it sends out, is that music bring us together even when we are playing on broken instruments, even when our reality may be challenging.”
For tickets and more information about the Mekudeshet Festival: mekudeshet.com.


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