There will be no shortage of Jewish music this upcoming season at Stanford University’s performing arts center. Not that there ever was any doubt.
“We host a broad spectrum of music from different ethnic cultures,” said Lois Wagner, executive director at Stanford Lively Arts. “And there happen to be a lot of really hot Jewish composers and musicians right now.”
Jewish musicians have always been part Stanford’s musical programming.
“We have always tried to have a good representation of Jewish musicians and music,” said Wagner, who has worked at Stanford Lively Arts for 21 years.
The Jewish music Lively Arts brings to the school is popular with the student body as well as the community. The arts center frequently teams up with Stanford Hillel for performances.
“They celebrate a wide array of cultural traditions, including Jewish culture,” said Adina Danzig, executive director of Stanford Hillel.
This year Hillel will co-sponsor the Jan. 28 performance of Chava Alberstein, an Israeli folk singer. Lively Arts is developing an educational program in conjunction with her performance.
Wagner also credits this partnership for keeping the Lively Arts program vibrant and alive.
But Alberstein is just one of the many Jewish events this season.
Osvaldo Golijov, an Eastern European Jew raised in Argentina, is the composer behind some of this season’s big performances. His mother was a piano teacher and he grew up in a household that vibrated with Jewish liturgical, klezmer and classical music.
Two of his pieces will be performed this fall. “Yiddishbuk,” by the St. Lawrence String Quartet on Oct. 16 and “Ayre,” with Dawn Upshaw on Oct. 23.
This won’t be the first time the St. Lawrence String Quartet has performed “Yiddishbuk,” chamber music that recalls the pain and memories of the Holocaust. The quartet was the first group to perform the piece two years after Golijov composed it in 1990.
“It demands something we weren’t used to when we first played it: a sound combination of ecstatic chanted Hebrew prayer combined with demonic screams, of strange words coming together,” said violinist Barry Shiffman of the quartet in an interview with the Jewish Bulletin in 2003.
The quartet will team up later in the season April 23 with Israeli cellist, Matt Haimowitz, when they perform composer Christo Hatzis’ meditation on war called “The Gathering.”
Meanwhile, with audiences still reeling from “Yiddishbuk, Golijov’s music will reappear.
Mezzo-soprano Upshaw will sing “Ayre,” songs inspired by 15th-century Spanish folk music. She commissioned Golijov to compose this piece, sung in Arabic, Hebrew, Sardinian, Spanish and Ladino — the ancient language of the Sephardim.
The work alludes to an era when the Christian, Arabs and Jews coexisted in Iberia.
“We help our audience have a better understanding of cultures from around the world,” Wagner said. “This is especially important at a time of turmoil between different cultures especially regarding religion.”
Israel’s folk darling, Alberstein, will appear this winter with the gypsy group Les Yeux Noirs. The group, founded by Jewish brothers Eric and Olivier Slabiak, frequently draws on Roma and klezmer music.
Alberstein, who sings in Yiddish, Hebrew and English has been a folk singer almost as long as modern Israel has been a nation.
Her performance last year evoked memories of folk songs some people heard as children. “They had tears in their eyes and were humming along,” Wagner said.
“It will be a truly Jewish evening.” Wagner said. “We bring the campus Jewish community together to support these events.”
Information on Stanford Lively Arts: (650) 725-2787 or www.livelyarts.stanford.edu.