Shabbat Shirah

January 27, 2018 - 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Shabbat Shirah – the Sabbath of Song 2018 – will honor the late Leonard Bernstein in what would be the year of his 100th birthday during a special concert on Saturday, January 27, beginning at 4:00 p.m.

The evening will feature a singalong of Bernstein’s classic Broadway show “West Side Story,” led by B’nai Israel’s Adult and Junior Choirs. The concert will be headlined by soloists Cantor Sheri Blum, Randye Kaye, Rachel Salem and Frank Enos. Barbara Rowe on the clavinet and Gary Rosoff will be the conductor for the festivities.

A longtime Fairfield resident, Bernstein (1918-1990) was, according to his Wikipedia entry, an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. According to music critic, Donal Henahan, Bernstein was “one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history.” According to Britannica.com, “As a composer Bernstein made skillful use of diverse elements ranging from biblical themes, as in the Symphony No. 1 (1942; also called Jeremiah) and the Chichester Psalms (1965); to jazz rhythms, as in the Symphony No. 2 (1949; The Age of Anxiety), after a poem by W.H. Auden; to Jewish liturgical themes, as in the Symphony No. 3 (1963; Kaddish). His best-known works are the musicals On the Town (1944; filmed 1949), Wonderful Town (1953; filmed 1958), Candide (1956), and the very popular West Side Story (1957; filmed 1961), written in collaboration with Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins. “He also wrote the scores for the ballets Fancy Free, Facsimile (1946), and Dybbuk and the music for the film On the Waterfront.