Concert Programs

During the pandemic shutdown, my colleague and I discovered online Ladino classes and decided that it would be a fun way to occupy our time while we couldn’t leave the house. We ended up getting so much more from the classes than we had even hoped for. Since the summer of 2020, I have taken courses in beginning, intermediate, and conversational Ladino. I have learned not just the language, but the culture that goes along with it. In doing so, I have deepened my love of Ladino music. My colleague and I decided to celebrate our learning with a concert. He flew down to Florida and we performed a concert of Ladino songs at Temple Beth Shalom. Below is the program from that concert.

The endowed music fund at Temple Beth Shalom needed to be replenished, and I wanted to do so with a concert. I chose the theme of arrival, since it was only my second year in the congregation, and I wanted to explore the idea of having arrived in a new congregation in a new city and feeling welcomed there. I chose repertoire on four themes: arrival in space, arrival in time, arrival in heart, and arrival in soul. I had made some connections with musicians in other local houses of worship and I engaged a friend who was the Music Minister at a local Methodist church to collaborate with me on the concert. Sadly, two weeks before the concert, everything shut down due to the pandemic, and the concert was canceled. However, I never gave up on the idea of having this concert. Two years later, once we could find a way to safely do so, we finally performed the concert. This time, we performed it in honor of the arrival of a time when we could find a way to safely gather. I named the concert Hineini, meaning “here I am,” as a nod to both a traditional High Holiday prayer and our ancestor Abraham’s traditional response any time that God called out to him. Below is the program from that concert.