In two weeks you’ll be able to hear a musician who has studied under masters in India, Turkey and Israel, and can play at least a dozen instruments — including the electric stand-up bass and an ancient bamboo flute from India.
Or perhaps the “street klezmer” stylings of Jeanette Lewicki and the Gonifs will be more to your liking. Or how about a performance that will combine the spirituality and rhythm of two very different musical traditions: Jewish and African American?
Actually, one doesn’t have to choose. From Sept. 1 through Dec. 1 in Rohnert Park, an extremely eclectic Jewish music series titled “L’Chayim! To Life!” will feature six Thursday night concerts, each highlighting various styles and mashups of Jewish music — all for free.
For the second year in a row, Sonoma State University’s music department and Jewish Studies program are coming together to present the series. The concerts are part of a course on Jewish music that invites musicians to perform a wide variety of Jewish music for the students, but with extra seats available in the concert hall, faculty realized there was no need to limit the audience to students.
“We thought, ‘Why don’t we open it up to the public?’ ” said Brian Wilson, a composer and conductor who wears two very different hats at SSU: chair of the Department of Music, Theory and Composition, as well as director of the Jewish Studies program. “Free concerts — I was very keen on that idea.”
The first concert on Sept. 1 will feature the S.F.-based Qadim Ensemble and its leader, Eliyahu Sills, performing sacred and folkloric music of the Near East. Sills, who studied ancient instruments in India under the guidance of bansuri master G.S. Sachdev, can play the ney (the reed flute of the Middle East), the bansuri (the bamboo flute of India) and a variety of other instruments.
The Qadim Ensemble includes musicians playing the ney, oud and Persian satar, as well as percussion instruments such as the darbukkah, rigg and daf. Their repertoire includes a variety of Middle Eastern and Northern African styles.
On Sept. 15, composer and Klezmatics co-founder Frank London will grab his trumpet and perform with accordionist Glenn Hartman and poet Jake Marmer. The concert, which will start one hour earlier than the 6:30 p.m. starting time of all the others in the series, is being billed as a combination of Beat poetry, African American rap music and improvised music with Jewish tropes.
On Sept. 29, the group Invisible Guy, self-described as “an unusually focused ensemble inventing a musical syntax for itself,” will take to the stage. The band is led by Oakland’s Ben Goldberg, who plays a variety of clarinets; he’ll be joined by pianist Michael Coleman and drummer Hamir Atwal.
After taking October off, the series will resume Nov. 3 with Jeanette Lewicki and the Gonifs, who play traditional Jewish folk music with a street sensibility. A vocalist who lives in San Francisco, Lewicki has recorded seven CDs, the latest with the San Francisco Klezmer Experience. She will be backed by musicians on clarinet, bass and accordion.
Stephen Saxon, who also performs with the S.F. Klezmer Experience, is a Bay Area-based cantor and cantorial soloist who will perform a concert of liturgical music on Nov. 17. Though the Oakland native has a variety of talents — he also plays the trumpet and a few years ago put together a musical program called “Gospel Shabbat” — this performance will shine a light mainly on the masters of the cantorial genre.
The series will conclude on Dec. 1 with a performance by two local favorites, Oakland hipster Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell and the East Bay’s Veretski Pass. Titled “Convergence: Spirituals from the Shtetl. Davening from the Delta,” this concert promises a repertoire of spiritual, melodic and textual crossover points from Russell — an African American Jewish vocalist specializing primarily in Yiddish music — and Veretski Pass, a klezmer trio that specializes in Old Country music that originated in the Ottoman Empire.
When asked what qualities define Jewish music, Wilson answered flatly, “I don’t know.” The purpose of this series, he said, is to raise questions about Jewish music, not to give answers.
“If a composer is Jewish and writes a piece of music, is it Jewish? I don’t know. If a non-Jewish composer writes a piece of music and uses Hebrew or uses a tune from the liturgy, is it Jewish music? I don’t know,” Wilson said. “I wouldn’t want to codify it with a definition.”
All the concerts will be held in Schroeder Hall, a 240-seat cathedral-like recital hall that is part of SSU’s Green Music Center. — j. staff
“L’Chayim! To Life! Jewish Music Series,” six Thursdays Sept. 1 through Dec. 1 at Schroeder Hall, Sonoma State University, 1801 E. Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. Free. http://tinyurl.com/hxl6aps