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“The First S’lihot” – One of the new releases from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music
Reviewed by Malcolm Miller

Amongst the many highlights of the 1998 JMI Festival “The World of Jewish Music” were concert performances by the renowned American cantor Ben Zion Miller, including a spectacular “Broadway to Hollywood” programme with orchestra and a more liturgical evening “With Heart and Soul”, together with The London Synagogue Singers conducted by Neil Levin, with the pianist Daniel Gildar. This remarkable performance included cantorial gems by Pinchik, Secunda, Machtenburg and Koussvitsky and were recorded. Those superb recordings now feature in one of the latest CD releases of the monumental Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, entitled “The First S’Lihot” ( Naxos 8.559428).

The Milken Archive, the brainchild of its dynamic Artistic Director Dr. Neil Levin, the American musicologist and conductor, is a monumental project running to some 100 CDs to preserve and disseminate the rich treasury of music of all genres related to the American Jewish experience. Just as 2006 sees the 350th anniversary of British Jewry, so too did American Jewry commemorate its 350 th anniversary in 2002, with a spectacular Festival-Conference Launch of the Milken Archive in New York. Since then, the CDs have flowed with regular monthly releases on the Naxos label of works which have either been newly composed, revived or reconstructed from sketches and recordings. Levin’s team of leading scholars, artists, composers, arrangers, orchestras and recording engineers, continue to astonish audiences and critics with ground-breaking additions to the discography and repertoire: the music spreads across synagogue, stage, and concert hall, with settings of Biblical and later Hebrew texts by composers, and single composer CDs of major Jewish works by such as Kurt Weil (his vast pageant The Eternal Road), Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Bernstein (Hebrew liturgical settings), Ellstein (Yiddish songs), Hugo Weisgall (including T’kiot for orchestra and shofar!), Samuel Adler, David Diamond, Herman Berlinski (who visited for the JMI York Commemoration in 1989), Martin David Levy, Ofer Ben Amots, the list goes on and on. There are cantatas on Masada , Passover, Naomi and Ruth, a Dave Brubeck composition and several CDs devoted to cantorial music and complete liturgical services, including the latest, “The First S’lihot.” For full details of the current releases, just visit www.milkenarchive.org.

“The First S’lihot” was recorded in 2000-1 in London with the same forces mentioned above, showing the thrilling, resilient, pure-toned voice of Cantor Ben Zion Miller to excellent effect supported by the tautly disciplined and rich hued choral sound under Levin’s stirring direction. Their choice of music features classic settings, including cantor-composers such as Israel Kaminsky, Schorr, Zilberts, Rumshinsky’s ‘Shma Kolenynu’, Koussevitsky’s ‘Ashamnu’, Rosenblatt’s ‘Shomer Yisrael’ and the famous ‘Hassidic Kaddish’ by Jacob Gottlieb. Throughout the authentic cantorial solos of Ben Zion Miller are impressive, enhanced by powerful vibrato, trilling, and a balance of operatic tone and rhapsodic ‘nusach’ (chant melody). The effect is like a synagogue service, with ideally balanced choir and virtuoso chazzan, and some talented boy treble solos. I have to admit that I listened to it just before a memorable Choral S’lihot Service at St John’s Wood Synagogue, London , in which Cantor Moshe Haschel and the Ne’imah Singers under Marc Temerlies gave outstanding and comparably inspiring performances: we may hope that they will be included in any forthcoming CD series on British Jewish music! The quality of performance and recording, the integrity of the repertoire as well as its variety represents as a microcosm of the Milken series as a whole.

It has so many pluses that mentioning some can only touch the surface, but chief amongst them is the vast scope and the value of the archive as an educational resource, for allied to it is a project to produce textbooks and student materials. The driving force at the heart of the project is the scholarly enthusiasm and energy of Dr. Neil Levin, who also contributes erudite and authoritative sleeve notes to many of the recordings. Levin’s vision has enabled a whole world of liturgical and concert and popular genres to be reclaimed; one hopes he will soon realise his wish to extend his vista to European Jewish music including the great reservoir of notable works by British composers. He and the Milken Project have our full admiration for helping to enrich and preserve Jewish musical traditions and that of the wider culture in its rich diversity.