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Annual American Composers Update
Jack Gottlieb
Jack Gottlieb presented "The Yiddisha Professor,
Early Songs of Irving Berlin," a lecture-entertainment
sponsored by the American Jewish Historical Society,
at the Center for Jewish History, New York, NY, July
2001, and will repeat it for the Jewish Culture series
at Queens (NY) College, in April 2002. In 1999, he completed
his book Funny, It Doesn't Sound Jewish (How Yiddish
Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced American Popular
Music), to be published by SUNY Press for release
in late 2002. He also has finished a revision of his
musical theater piece After the Flood (book by
Roy Friedman), a six-character imagining of what might
have happened to Noah and family after they were given
the rainbow. In January 2001, The Congregational hymn
Your Hand, O God, Has Guided was heard first
at Flatbush-Tompkins Congregational Church, Eric Birk,
music director, in Brooklyn, NY. Gershwin Medley:
3 x 2, Gershwin songs He Loves and She Loves,
I've Got a Crush On You, and Isn't It a Pity?,
transcribed by Gottlieb for one piano, four hands had
its premiere with Bernadette Hoke and Birk at Weill
Recital Hall, New York, NY, March 2001. His November
2000 talk about contemporary synagogue music, "How
Practical is the Practice of the Practicum?" was
printed in the March 2001 issue of Koleinu, the
house organ of the American Conference of Cantors (Reform).
Premieres
At the First Reformed Episcopal Church, New York, NY,
May 2001, Barry J. Crawford and Hoke presented the flute-piano
version of Letting Go. Candy Machine premiered
as part of the 2001 program The Truth about Love - Serious
Cabaret, with soprano Mary Carewe and pianist Philip
Mayers, at Nottingham (England) University (February);
and at The Louisiana Museum, in Copenhagen, Denmark
(May). In 2001, the new version of Twilight Crane,
a fantasy for narrator and woodwind quintet, based on
the Japanese folk tale Yuzuru, had its first performances,
with the Quintet of the Americas, at the Queens (NY)
Botanical Gardens, with narrator Chris Vasquez (June);
at the Bar Harbor (ME) Music Festival, with narrator
Patti Wyss (July); and at the Community Church, in Douglaston,
NY, narrated by Vasquez (November). The first live performance
of the new version of Psalmistry, for choir,
soloists, and jazz ensemble, occurred at the Eastminster
Presbyterian Church, in Columbia, SC, with the South
Carolina Symphonic Chorale, conducted by Timothy Koch,
October 2001.
Performances
Heard on a Downtown Music Productions concert with
tenor Gregory Mercer and pianist Mimi Stern Wolfe, was
the song cycle Yes is a pleasant country (13
poems of e. e. cummings), May 2001 at the Kosciuszko
Foundation, New York, NY. In 2001, Hatsi Kaddish
had performances at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, in New
York, NY, with the School of HUC-JIR Sacred Music Choir,
observing the 125th anniversary of Hebrew Union College
(April); at Congregation Emanu-El of Westchester, in
Rye, NY (June); and at the International Zimriyah Festival,
Joshua Jacobson, conductor, in Jerusalem, Israel (July-August).
String Quartet (1954) was played by the Golden Fleece
String Quartet, Mary Wooten, leader, at a concert produced
by Golden Fleece, Ltd., Lou Rodgers, director, at the
Greenwich Music School, New York, NY, October 2001.
Recordings
Three Candle Blessings, for soloist, reader,
SATB choir, and organ; Carolina Chamber Chorale, Koch,
conductor; Milken Archive, June 2001.
Further Information
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