Revered jazz artists to perform at free Temple Sinai concert
The folklorist Yitzhak Buxbaum recounts in his lovely source book on Tu b’Shevat, the Jewish “New Year for Trees” — which, this year, begins on the night of Feb. 9 — a mystical commentary from the Hasidic tradition, inspired by the Torah, that “a person is like a tree of the field.”
Buxbaum cites a teaching that states that when a person is down they “should ponder a tree in winter. Its leaves have fallen, its moisture has dried up, it is almost a dead stump in the ground. Then suddenly, it begins to revive and to draw moisture from the earth. Slowly it blossoms, then brings forth fruits. A person should learn from this not to despair, but to take hope and courage, for they too are
‘like a tree.’”
We live in an age where commentators forecast an “epidemic of frailty” like we have never witnessed before. But rather than passively resign ourselves to helplessness and obsolescence, we have within us the power to actively author and seek out better remedies to such social contagion as fear and pessimism. We can work together on building a better environment, one that moves us toward valorizing the longevity of life, love, and creativity.
In his magnificent new release “Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores The Power and Potential of Our Lives,” world-renowned Daniel J. Levitin advises us on how to purposefully and mindfully rethink our personal trajectories.
Levitin, also a celebrated sound engineer who has worked with the likes of Stevie Wonder and penned the hit book “This Is Your Brain on Music,” explained in correspondence that the transfixing image on his book’s cover is “done in the shape of the human brain. Instead of the folds and crevices we normally see, the interior was rendered as rings of a tree — the way we count the age of trees.”
This past summer I worked with the Grammynominated folk artist Paul Reisler. I developed with his guidance content for services to add to the original beautiful songs some of our congregants had workshopped with him in years past. I was inspired by Paul’s poignant track on the cycle of life in “Thought I Was A Tree” as I wove together the lyrics for my own musical take on the passage of time, a tribute to my late father, a child survivor of the Shoah.
Newport News is the birthplace of true music royalty, the iconic chanteuse Ella Fitzgerald. Each time I invite an amazing composer to the area for a program at our synagogue, such as the great Ben Sidran (Diana Ross, Van Morrison) in 2017, I would like to believe we are saluting the musical traditions and values that Fitzgerald upheld so dearly.
In a free public presentation and Hampton Roads exclusive, at1p.m. Feb. 9 Temple Sinai will host, direct from New York City, three celebrated jazz artists
— wordsmith and “fearless sax impresario” Roy Nathanson, trombone titan and crooner Curtis Fowlkes and bass guitar hero Jerome Harris. Nathanson and Fowlkes are best friends and founders of the wildly talented and often humorous Jazz Passengers.
Their creative partnership spans several decades. They first met as musicians in the Big Apple Circus. Since those early days they have presented their work on “Late Night with David Letterman” and some of the world’s most prominent stages including Lincoln Center and London’s Royal Festival Hall. Nathanson’s and Fowlkes’s albums have been produced by such innovators as Hal Wilner (“Saturday Night Live”), and their band has been fronted by Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Deborah Harry, Elvis Costello and Mavis Staples. Their creativity knows no boundaries, nor signs of slowing down as they grow older. Highlights include: “Fire at Keaton’s Bar and Grill” (hailed as “an Off-Broadway show from a parallel universe”); Rock
Concert, a meditation, commissioned by the Museum of Science at the University of Wisconsin, on a 4.4 billion-year-old zircon crystal considered the “oldest known piece of earth”; a live musical reinterpretation of the1950s 3D horror classic “The Creature From The Black Lagoon”; and a radio play for NPR, “You’re The Fool.”
Fowlkes, among other accomplishments, has also led his own group, the Catfish Corner Band, and served as an important player in the Kansas City All-Stars, a jazz group appearing in and born out of the Robert Altman film “Kansas City.” Mr. Harris is a virtuoso musician and educator who throughout his long and storied career has been sought by many of the giants of jazz including the revered Sonny Rollins.
One of Nathanson’s and Fowlkes’ earliest recordings, a powerful piece titled “Tikkun,” refers to the Jewish concept of repairing the world. Nathanson is in West Africa where he is serving an artistic residency in the Republic of Guinea.
He explained via email that his connection to Judaism “continues to evolve. As circumstances of my own life and the life of the world continue to change the necessity of understanding our connectedness with all struggling people and environments becomes ever more paramount.”
For Nathanson tikkun olam is “an essential aspect of what it means to be Jewish.
To which the Brooklyn native added, “I live several blocks away in what is the most ethnically diverse zip code in America. To me, that mixed identity is paramount to what it is to be a human being in this world today.”
Please join us at Temple Sinai for an afternoon of poetry, music and conversation with three jazz musicians at the peak of their powers hosted by the incomparable master musician Jae Sinnett, host of WHRV’s Sinnett in Session and the R&B Chronicles.