World Jewish

The concert will be performed on a set split into eight segments, each representing a Hanukka candle.

By BEN JACOBSON
Jewish music and progressive world beat enthusiasts have much to gain by attending the performance L'hadlik this Saturday night. The event takes the authentic anthropologist's approach to Jewish music - a refreshing change in today's age of rampant shtetl fetishism. Focusing on Jewish-minded instrumental and vocal music written throughout the ages and all over the world, the concert will be performed on a set split into eight segments, each representing a Hanukka candle. Highlights include: a second-century composition considered to be the first-ever piece of written Jewish music; chants of the Yemenite Jews; dance suites from Greece and Turkey, Renaissance synagogue music; a lullaby from the Holocaust and several original pieces based on the Jewish liturgy and canon. The latter were written by the core trio of the concert's performers: Stephen Hornstein on woodwinds, Jeffrey Kowalsky on percussion and Steve Peskoff on guitars. One of the themes of the evening will be the exploration of rhythm, with exotic percussion - including gongs, tabla, a vibraphone, bongos, a frame drum, boo-bams, congas and darbukas - taking a prominent role. Recent oleh Daniel Hoffman, who also plays with various avant-garde Bay Area klezmer fusion groups, will serve as the main trio's official "visiting artist" for the event. Other guest performers, including a women's vocal ensemble, are also set to appear. In addition to playing woodwinds, the accomplished Professor Hornstein also serves as the artistic director, founder and primary researcher for the event. The first in a series of benefit concerts for the upstart new-style hassidic congregation Mizmor L'David, L'Hadlik takes place this Saturday night at 8 at the Mifal Hapayis building on the corner of Efratta and Giladi Streets in Talpiot.