Showtime: Winter music in Haifa

St. John’s Church in Haifa will host a concert on December 29 as part of the Winter Festival with the Jerusalem Festival Orchestra.

By BARRY DAVIS
Jerusalem Festival Orchestra 521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Jerusalem Festival Orchestra 521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Winter music in Haifa
St. John’s Church in Haifa will host a concert on December 29 at 12 noon as part of the Winter Festival. The program features a wide range of works, including Handel’s Concerto for Organ and Orchestra, Adagio for Organ and Orchestra by Albinoni, a generous portion of tango-inflected material, with Jorge Bosso’s “Fantasy on a Theme” by Piazzolla and “Nostalgias” by Juan Carlos Cobian and some operatic numbers, such as Bizet’s “The Toreador Song” and Figaro’s Aria from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville.
The concert features a stellar instrumental lineup, including Austrian mother and daughter violinist and viola player duo Dora Schwarzberg and Nora Romanoff, Argentinean cellist Jorge Bosso and organist Maria Neishtadt as well as the Jerusalem Festival Orchestra directed by Vladimir Barsevich. The vocalists for the occasion are soprano Maria Yoffe and baritone Igor Tavrovsky.
For tickets and more information: (02) 535-6954
Latrun gets jazzed up for Christmas
The Latrun Monastery will host a Christmas concert fronted by veteran jazz pianist Leonid Ptashka on December 29 at 12 noon.
Ptashka, along with Paraguayan vocalist Moses Si, double-bass player Valery Liftz and percussionist Yvgeni Maestrovski, will perform a wide-ranging program that takes in gospel and jazz with some touches of soul music.
For tickets and more information: (02) 535-6954
Ferber and Orion unite at Tmuna
Pop singer Sheila Ferber will join forces with singer, guitarist and keyboard player Ram Orion in a concert at Tmuna Theater in Tel Aviv on December 27. The pair first worked together in 2004 on Ferber’s well-received debut album Titnahagi Yafeh (“Behave”), and are now working on a new CD.
Since her first release, Ferber has put out two more CDs of her original scores, Matok Shahor (“Black Sweetie”) and Perah Kir (“Wallflower”) as well as an album and show based on poems by Natan Alterman together with cellist Maya Belitzman. Ferber and Belitzman also recently produced a show called Shirei Kassit (“Kassit Songs”) based on works by poets they used to meet at the legendary bohemian Kassit Café in Tel Aviv.
Belitzman will also play at Thursday’s Tmuna date, with Adam Ben-Amitai on guitars, Matan Efrat on drums and Naaman Tal on bass.
For tickets and more information: (03) 561-1211 and www.tmu-na.org.il
Race in Haifa
The Haifa Theater will perform Race by award winning American playwright, screenwriter, essayist and film director David Mamet from December 29 to January 12, with shows taking place both in Haifa and at the ZOA House in Tel Aviv (January 6 and 7).
Race was first performed on Broadway in 2009 with a cast that included James Spader and Kenny Washington. The play is based on the efforts of three attorneys – two black and one white – to defend a white man charged with committing a crime against a black woman. The work follows a meandering route as lawyers and defendant alike grapple with the evidence and with their own feelings about race.
The Haifa Theater version is directed by Moshe Naor and stars Rami Hochberger and Norman Issa as lawyers and Sharon Alexander as the defendant.
For tickets and more information: (04) 860-0500 and www.ht1.co.il
Cargo Cult in Bat Yam
Museums of Bat Yam (MoBY)’s latest exhibition, “Cargo Cult,” will open December 27 at 8 p.m.
The name of the show comes from a religious practice that is prevalent in pre-industrial tribal societies in various parts of the world as a result of their interaction with technologically developed cultures. The cults focus on obtaining the material riches of the advanced culture in question – which the tribes term “the cargo” – by means of magic and religious ceremonies and practices. The cult mainly evolved in remote districts of New Guinea, as well as in Melanesian and Micronesian societies in the southwest of the Pacific Ocean.
Cult practices in this field include constructing simulated airfields, offices, dining rooms and various products, such as radios made of coconut shells and straw.
“Cargo Cult” features works by a large number of Israeli artists inspired by the tribal practice, including Michael Groveman, Arcadi Greenman and the Neo-Barbison Group of Natasha Zorbova, Anna Lukshevski, Zoya Cherkeski, Asia Lukin and Olga Kondina. The exhibition is curated by Max Lomberg.
The opening will feature a musical slot courtesy of pianist Daniel Sarid, bass player Igor Krotogolov and drummer Ariel Armoni. “Cargo Cult” will run until April 6.
For more information: (03) 6591140 and www.bat-yam.muni.il