JMI Conferences
International Conference
ART MUSICS OF ISRAEL:
Identities, Ideologies, Influences
Monday 28 March – Thursday 31 March 2011
Conference Short Report by Dr Malcolm Miller
The conference was arguably the most thought provoking event I attended in the past months and I found myself, from morning to evening, attending the events and not having any free time to spare, thanks to the consistent high quality of the papers and the concerts. I think that the fact that you managed to pull so many leading figures in the Israeli music world out of their natural habitat and encourage serious discourse generated honest, bold, and surprising debates which rarely take place when Israeli musicians are at home.’ Alon Schab (Trinity College Dublin)
The first ever UK-based international conference on ‘Art Musics of Israel’ attracted a sizeable gathering of leading academics, composers and performers from Israel, the USA, and Europe, to present over thirty papers and four panel discussions on a range of highly topical and live issues highlighting the wider international significance of music in Israel. The ground-breaking conference was presented at Senate House, by the Jewish Music Institute (JMI) in partnership with the Institute of Musical Research (IMR), and SOAS, University of London.
Delegates to the conference pictured with conference director, Malcolm Miller, included internationally acclaimed musicologists, composers and musicians. Left to right: Rotem Luz pianist, composer and doctoral student, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, (daughter of distinguished composer Yehezkel Braun); Malcolm Miller, British Musicologist and performer; Ronit Seter, Israeli musicologist based in Washington DC; Menachem Zur, distinguished Israeli composer and professor at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance; Alexander Knapp, British musicologist, performer and composer; Tsippi Fleischer, dynamic Israeli composer based in Haifa; and Gila Goldstein, acclaimed Israeli pianist and Ben Haim specialist now based in New York.
The wealth of scholarship and performance was impressive, with each day devoted to a major theme, the first being the topical issue of ‘Arabic Jewish Musical Encounters’. Michael Wolpe, Head of Composition at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and a prolific composer and Artistic Director, gave an overview of current musical fashions, which underlined the upsurge of genres assimilating middle-eastern accents.
Professor Owen Wright (SOAS) chaired the first keynote paper, ‘Music Symbol of Identity: Interrelation between Western and Eastern Art Musics in Israel’ by Professor Amnon Shiloah (Emeritus, Hebrew University), an authority on music in Islam and Jewish and Arabic Musics, who revisited his own research of some sixty years ago on Israeli composers’ sense of identity, highlighting the increasing valuing of oriental elements in Israeli concert music.
The theme was illustrated further by internationally-renowned Iraqi-Jewish Yair Dalal and Palestinian-Israeli performer and composer Emad Dalal whose duets, in the first of four lunchtime recitals, symbolised both an optimistic spirit of friendship and the radical creative symbiosis of East and West idiomatic to a large spectrum of new music in Israel.
Emad Dlal and Yair Dalal perform music that bridges the Jewish and Arab Israeli experience for the conference delegates.
Composer presentations on similar themes led to the first of four panel discussions, entitled ‘Crossing Cultures: Musical Encounters’, chaired by Norman Lebrecht, which aired insightful ideas about the political, economic and aesthetic issues surrounding Arabic – Jewish musical life in Israel.
On the panel chaired by Norman Lebrecht were (left to right): Michael Wolpe, Head of Composition and Conducting at the Jerusalem Academy and the JMI Visiting Composer from Israel; Emad Dlal; Yair Dalal; Moshe Morad, Israeli record producer and music agent; and writer and broadcaster, Norman Lebrecht.
The second day focused on National Identity in many guises, and its climax was the panel chaired by Professor Arnold Whittall (Emeritus, King’s College, London), whose own keynote on ‘Keeping One’s Distance: Arnold Schoenberg and Israel, Then and Now’ featured as the highlight on the final day.
The third day focused on European Heritage and cultural transfer, with the keynote paper by Professor Jehoash Hirshberg (Hebrew University, Jerusalem), an authority on Israeli music and author of the only biography of Paul Ben Haim, who considered music from the émigré generations of the 30s to the most recent in ‘How East is East? European Orientalism, Ethnicity and Arabic Elements in Israeli Music’. This led to the liveliest panel, ‘Composers in Conversation’ which elicited eloquent, wide-ranging exchanges from those at varying poles of the stylistic spectrum.
The final panel with Sally Groves (Schotts), Gerald Kingsley (Weinberger) and Rodney Greenberg (Proms TV Director) led to fruitful ideas regarding encouraging new performance and collaboration between musicians in Israel, the UK and beyond.
The pluralism of Israeli music was reflected in the wide ranging programme of four lunchtime concerts, an opera screening and three evening events, culminating with a stimulating Purcell Room concert of UK premieres by one of Israel’s leading new music groups, the Meitar Ensemble.
The young players of the Meitar Ensemble from Israel, at the end of their Purcell Room debut concert being congratulated by composer Menachem Zur for their excellent rendering of his exciting new work: Free Sex-Tet.
Certainly it was the formidable display of fresh research on concert, popular, and folk and traditional musics, by highly experienced and early career scholars and composers alike, which formed the main backbone of the event, engendering much open discussion and debate, with conversations continuing during generous refreshments.
Much credit for the excellent support and smooth running of the conference is due to the Institute of Musical Research as also to the organisational team at JMI and SOAS. A more detailed report is published separately, whilst it is intended that papers and panels will appear in a ‘Proceedings’ volume that promises to be a significant contribution to the musicological discipline as to musical appreciation in general.
Malcolm Miller © 2011
Congratulations [to JMI and partners] for this outstanding conference. My feeling is that it will have a strong impact in our future and contribute a lot to the development of Jewish and Israeli Music. Daniel Galay (Director, Beit Frankfurt Music Centre, Tel Aviv)
I greatly enjoyed the high-quality conference …I liked the mix of classical and non-classical, deceased composers/living composers, etc. … I believe that among the conference delegates there were lots of reunions, re-discoveries, new encounters, new gained knowledge and food for thought, which might lead to some future creative projects in regards to Israeli music, and this is already a wonderful contribution of JMI !! (as always). Gila Goldstein (Professor of Piano, Boston University, USA)
It was a pleasure for me to hear some of Israel's pioneer musicologists speaking. I was extremely impressed with Professor Shiloah's paper and hopefully some practical collaboration between him and some of the younger scholars at the University of Haifa will result from this. It was also very interesting to hear Professor Hirshberg. I greatly enjoyed hearing Dr. Miller's paper on the Israeli piano trios as well as getting to know some of the young generation of Israel's musicologists. I was also impressed with some of the British scholars who gave interesting papers… All in all it was a stimulating conference with a vibrant and vivid air to it. Oded Zehavi (University of Haifa)
Click here to read the conference longer report (12 pages)
updated 12th April 2011
