Showtime: Spain meets Argentina

Spain meets Argentina
The Hayek Center for Contemporary Art in Old Jaffa will host a bilateral musical event Saturday evening fronted by Uruguayan-born vocalist Sylvia Kigel. The singer will perform a program of flamenco numbers and some Argentinean tango material, along with guitarist Leonid Beitman and accordion player Leonid Kresnik. The trio will receive substantial sonic support from the Jerusalem Festival Orchestra under conductor Vladimir Bershewitz.

The repertoire includes works by 18th-century Italian cellist and composer Luigi Boccherini, early 20th-century Spanish Andalusian composer Manuel de Falla, renowned 20th-century Spanish pianist and composer Joaquin Rodriguez and Argentinean nuevo tango genre founder, bandoneon player and composer Astor Piazzolla.

The show will take place at 6 p.m. For tickets and more information: (02) 535-6954.

An Irish gem in Kiryat Shmona and Tel Aviv
The Kiryat Shmona-based Mara Theater company has started a run of 16 performances of the award-winning play Little Gem by Irish playwright Elaine Murphy. The production stars Lia Koenig, Tatiana Kenlis-Olier and Moran Rosen and is directed by Roy Horowitz. The original show was first performed at Dublin’s Fringe Festival in 2008, where it won first prize, and it won another award at the Edinburgh Festival the following year.

Little Gem is a tragicomedy based on three monologues in which the female characters relate their personal histories of love and loss in an alienating contemporary world.

The plot features three generations of Dublin women, each of whom is experiencing some emotional crisis.

The relationship among the women is difficult, and substance abuse also plays a part in their dysfunctional lives. Eventually, however, hope finds its way in.

The second performance of Little Gem’s current run takes place at Mara Theater’s home base in Kiryat Shmona at noon today, and the play will alternate between its northern base and Habimah Theater in Tel Aviv until February 3.

For tickets and more information: (04) 695-9659 or www.t-mara.co.il.

Hill comes to town
The Contemporary Arts Center in Tel Aviv is hosting an exhibition of works by famed Californian video artist Gary Hill. Hill has worked in a wide range of media for almost four decades, including sculpture, sound, video, art installations and performance. He has spent many years developing his work in the inter-media field, exploring such topics as the physicality of language, synesthesia – a state of experiencing mixed sensations – and perceptual conundrums, as well as ontological space and viewer interactivity.

His 1994 work, Circular Breathing, incorporated sound and image mixed in with thickly layered music as five panels of monochrome video fueled each other’s images.

Last year, he unveiled his Depth Charges creation, which is centered on an ethereal, distorted image of jazz guitarist Bill Frisell playing to an abstract figure of Hill himself.

The current exhibition includes Depth Charges, as well as Viewer from 1995, in which members of the public view a long corridor lined with Mexican laborers and experience a sense of tangible connection.

Two other works in the exhibition are Wall Piece and Remembering Paralinguay (both from 2000). In the former, Hill is seen trying repeatedly to read a text while colliding with a wall, while the latter is a single-channel video installation in which a female figure approaches the spectator, making sounds that veer from singing to some prehistoric or animal-like utterances.

The exhibition will run until January 24, and there will be screenings of two Hill movies on December 12 and January 8 (both 7 p.m.).

For more information: (03) 510- 6111.

Brahms’s German Requiem in Haifa, TA and Modi’in
The Israeli Vocal Ensemble will put on three performances of Brahms’s German Requiem in the next two weeks, at the Greek Orthodox Church in Haifa (December 8, 12 p.m.), Tel Aviv Museum (December 15, 8:30 p.m.) and Einan Hall in Modi’in (December 22, 8:30 p.m.).

The performances signal the start of a new series of concerts by the ensemble and feature one of the most popular works of the classical oeuvre.

Augmenting the ensemble’s vocalists will be soprano singer Hadas Faran-Asia and baritone Yair Polishook, as well as pianists Tami Kanazawa and Yuval Admony, under the baton of conductor Yuval Ben-Ozer.

For more information: 074-701- 2112 or www.nive.co.il.