Renowned early music ensemble Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale is bringing another concert of Jewish music to the Bay Area — this time with an esoteric nighttime vibe.
“Jewish Nightlife: Hebrew Poetry, Kabbalah and Coffee,” on Jan. 29 in Palo Alto and Jan. 31 in San Francisco, aims to depict the heady atmosphere that suffused the multicultural music scene of 16th-century Italy and the vibrant world of Hebrew poetry in the Middle East.
“This is a rare opportunity to understand and experience Jewish music and culture across many boundaries, boundaries that separate Jews from non-Jews and European from non-European cultures,” said Francesco Spagnolo, Philharmonia’s “Jews & Music” series scholar-in-residence and former curator of the Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art in Berkeley.
The concert is based on a class Spagnolo has taught for many years at UC Berkeley and his own extensive research. The program will include traditional Syrian and Moroccan songs alongside Baroque works by Luigi Boccherini and Salamone Rossi. Israeli vocalist and percussionist Yair Harel will also perform.
Spagnolo told J. that in what he calls “the roaring 1570s,” night marked a special time that was seen very differently from how we view the hours of darkness today, in an era of streetlamps and headlights.
“We have to think about a world in which streets in a city are not lit, in which the night was essentially the domain, religiously, of the Catholic Church monks who prayed at given hours throughout the night,” he said. “Otherwise it was criminals and prostitutes.”
It was also the time in which Jews and non-Jews gathered to listen to music considered innovative and even transgressive.
“These nighttime ceremonies in Italian cities involve Jews and non-Jews conquering the night as a time of engagement and cultural creativity, experimentation and dialogue,” he said.
Coffee will be provided at the show — and that’s fitting, Spagnolo said, because the advent of the beverage in Europe heralded a cultural shift.
“Coffee allows people to stay up at night,” he said. “And the Kabbalists bring a variety of rituals that have to do with the specific holiness of the midnight hour.”
Nicholas McGegan, Philharmonia’s former music director who spent 35 years with the group, will conduct. Spagnolo said the concerts are a rare chance to get a glimpse into a past that has much to say about the present.
“Our history, our past and our present actually present us with many bridges to reconcile cultural differences, cultural conflicts, which we know are, unfortunately, very much in our life today,” he said.