They met in a Jewish chat room.
He resides in Concord, she in Darmstadt, Germany.
Their hearts were united by their common love of music.
The man, Herb Gaynes, is a retired baritone saxophone player who used to play in a dance band. The woman, Irith Gabriely, is a professional clarinetist known as the “Queen of Jewish Soul.”
After “we sort of fell in love with each other,” said Gaynes, he invited her to visit.
She readily agreed.
Then they took it one step further.
“We figured as long as I’m here, why not put on a concert,” said Gabriely, who arrived in Concord during Chanukah for her first visit to the United States.
“A friend I made from Hamburg said she puts on a show that’s something else,” said Gaynes, a retired salesman, who’s now using his skills to promote Gabriely’s performance. “She sings, she jumps, she dances, she talks; she gets the audience to jump up and down and sing and dance.
“I’m dying to see it myself!”
Gabriely will exhibit her original style, which combines klezmer, classical and jazz with a hint of what Gabriely calls “Jewish feeling” during a free performance at 1:30 p.m. Sunday.
Gabriely hopes to attract hundreds to Gaynes’ retirement home, The Heritage, at 2222 Pacheco St., where the concert will take place. For information, call (925) 676-1173.
Her concert venues are usually larger. She has played in the Darmstadt Opera and with her band, Colalaila, at the hall of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Also with Colalaila she has given award-winning performances in the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland and the Klezmer Festival in Safed, Israel. She has produced 10 CDs of her music and will play with the Munich Philharmonic in February.
Gabriely doesn’t mind the change of pace of her upcoming concert in Concord.
“To play music is a mitzvah,” she said. “It will make [the audience] happy with no charge.”
Gabriely, born in Haifa, began playing the clarinet at the age of 8 — but first she mastered the flute.
“When I was 6 or 7, I saw children at school with this very long, funny bag and I asked my mother what it was. She said it was a flute,” said Gabriely. “I wanted also such a funny bag, so I came to the flute.”
In only a matter of weeks, Gabriely said she was playing like such a pro that her mother enrolled her in a children’s orchestra. There she was given a clarinet.
“I took my clarinet home, I took it out of the case, and I just started to play.”
She won her first competition at the age of 12 and went on to study music and philosophy at the University of Tel Aviv. In 1978 she moved to Germany to play in the Darmstadt Opera.
While her music repertoire isn’t entirely made up of what would be considered conventional Jewish music, Gabriely insists her music is Jewish nonetheless.
“There is a Jewish line, like a red line, through the whole music that I play,” she said. “In the Bible it is not written which type of music one has to play, but that it’s a Jewish feeling, that counts in the music.”
This feeling, she said, is similar to that of prayer.
“If men pray in a synagogue, sometimes he screams, sometimes he shouts with his God.”
Gabriely screams and shouts with her God through her clarinet. She calls this is the pathway to health and happiness, synonyms in the Chassidic tradition.
“Music makes people happy, healthy. In the time of the Bible, those sick in the temple were cured with music.”
Gabriely had her own experience with bringing about health and happiness through her music, when a woman dying of stomach cancer remembered Gabriely from a concert and asked her to come to the hospital and play.
“All the people in the other rooms came with their beds and were singing together,” recalled Gabriely. “She was able to hold on for six more days after that. That’s when I started to think my music was special.
“It is said that nothing is more stronger, opens heaven more than a sigh which is coming from the depth of the heart.”
As for more romantic matters of the heart, the two who met online are getting along “swimmingly,” according to Gaynes. He said they plan to become lifelong partners.
Gabriely, a single parent, said she must finish raising her 17-year-old daughter before she can contemplate a move to America. But she plans to visit quite often, possibly combining the trips with concerts.
She also expressed her wish that he will “visit me in Germany” — a wish that raised no objections from Gaynes.