September 9, 2004

Celebrating Sounds Rooted in Gritty but Fertile New Turf

here were Jews in Manhattan before there was a New York City. A boat with 23 Jews arrived in New Amsterdam in September 1654, and the event is being commemorated with the weeklong New York Jewish Music and Heritage Festival, which began with a concert on Tuesday night at the 92d Street Y. "Great Jewish Artists Perform Great Jewish Composers" featured music by 10 native and adopted New Yorkers, played by two of them in person - Philip Glass and Neil Sedaka - and interpreted by other musicians.

The concert was a straightforward tribute, setting aside New York Jewish attributes like irony or contentiousness. It hinted at recurring motifs in American Jewish music: heritage, assimilation, fusion and eclecticism.

Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Carole King, all represented on the program, have been central to mainstream American songwriting precisely because their music is cosmopolitan and inclusive. The music of the event's other composers - Leonard Bernstein, Philip Glass, John Zorn and Laura Nyro - also reaches far and wide. It's impossible to isolate a shared Jewish strain within their music, which is always tied to a larger American identity.

The most overt expression of a Jewish heritage was in selections from Mr. Zorn's called "Masada,'' performed by Mark Feldman on violin and Sylvie Courvoisier on piano. The pieces echoed the modes and melodies of klezmer music, but with New York twists: chopped-up dynamic contrasts, slippery key changes, stretches of frantic activity and songful ease.

Mr. Glass performed three of his piano études, which slip the additive structures of Indian raga under seemingly Romantic musical material, and he created drama within their strict blueprints. The pianist Fred Hersch played Bernstein and Gershwin songs. Melodies emerged from pointillistic clusters and were answered by scurrying counterpoint; transparent chords loomed up and then splintered again. He placed the songs under constant, affectionate reconsideration.

Mr. Sedaka treated Irving Berlin's "Always" and "What'll I Do" as parlor-piano waltzes, sung in a sweet old-fashioned vibrato, then turned to his own hits. He made "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" sound like a bluesy saloon song before switching to its original bounce.

Debbie Friedman, singing Laura Nyro songs that sound like agnostic gospel, and Lisa Loeb and Jill Sobule, harmonizing on Simon and Garfunkel songs, sounded like dutiful coffeehouse acts, while Soulfarm played lesser-known Bob Dylan songs as predictable folk-rock. David Broza personalized his material more. He hyped Carole King songs into melodrama with hectic flamenco guitar strums and fervid vocal crescendoes. It was misguided but crowd pleasing.