Showtime

Art, music and culture events around the Tel Aviv area.

By BARRY DAVIS
Tel Aviv skyscape 370 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Tel Aviv skyscape 370
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Musical accords The third annual Accordion Festival will take place tomorrow and Sunday at the Enav Cultural Center and Levontin 7 club in Tel Aviv (8 p.m. start both days).
The proceedings open with Vitaly Podolsky’s Triotrip project, with the stellar 43-year-old Ukraine born accordionist fronting a threesome that includes acoustic bass player Edmond Gilmore and drummer Ido Maimon. The show takes in a wide swath of musical disciplines and rhythms, including Cuban and Moroccan material heavily seasoned with tango and Celtic beats, rock ‘n’ roll and jazz.
The festival program is clearly designed to appeal to as wide a musical consumer sector as possible, with other celebrities on the two-day roster including 73-year-old accordion player Tuval Peter, who will join forces with singer-bass guitarist Yarona Caspi in a program of songs written by Sasha Argov.
Klezmer fans will, no doubt, be happy with the confluence between the high-energy Oy Division outfit and veteran accordionist Emil Kroitor, before things take a more visceral turn when the rock-infused Greedy Adam trio – of multi-instrumentalist Noam Inbar; singer, guitarist and bass player Adam Scheflan; and drummer-percussionist Ariel Armoni – hit the Levontin 7 stage.
For tickets and more information: (03) 574-5005, (03) 521-7763, (03) 560-5084 and www.levontin7.com
Ya’ari’s Leap Sharon Ya’ari’s new photography exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum is not of a particular sunny nature, although his images are particularly arresting. The show, which goes by the name “Leap Toward Yourself,” features pictures taken by Ya’ari over the past 10 years which, he says, “described a melancholy state of tension between the ideal and the real.”
The works exude a sense of transience in which reality ebbs and flows, whereby the known and the familiar are constantly swept away and replaced by new vistas and social mores.
But Ya’ari’s outlook is not totally bleak. His “Route 6” frame, for example, shows the highway leading to a new horizon where, possibly, good things await the observer.
“Leap Toward Yourself” will run until April 26, 2014.
For more information: www.tamuseum.org.il
Orna Porat in Givatayim The Orna Porat Theater for Children and Youth will offer youngsters around 50 shows for their theatrical delight between November 28 and December 5.
This is the sixth edition of the annual Hanukka-time festival and takes in a wide spectrum of shows, including a number of premieres.
The latter include Haverim Al Hagesher (Friends on the Bridge), for ages four to seven, which tells the story of a couple of bosom buddies who fall out but rediscover their friendship with the help of a wise old carpenter.
The shows in the festival include plenty of music and dance. Halev Shel Shiraz (Shiraz’s Heart) certainly pertains to the song-and-dance category. The show was written by Tzruya Lahav, with lyrics by Rita and the playwright, and is directed by Moshe Kaptan and Oz Morag, with the latter also responsible for the choreography.
The play, which is aimed at ages five to 12, follows a Cinderellalike theme and conveys the importance of intent rather than outward experiences.
Other performances in the festival program include the Pitzpon Theater show for ages one to two-and-a-half, Bialik’s Garden for ages three to seven, and Little Mozart and Peter and the Wolf for ages four to eight.
For tickets and more information: (03) 732-5340 and www.t-g.co.il
Flying in Jaffa The Arab-Hebrew Theater of Jaffa will host the premiere of The Simurgh tomorrow evening at 9 p.m.
The play, by poet-filmmaker Sigalit Banai, is presented in a spoken-word poetry format and feeds off book The Processing of a Sufi Legend, which was in turn inspired by The Conference of the Birds, by 12th-century Persian Sufi poet Farid al-Din Attar.
The book relates a legend in which 30 birds convene to decide who will be their king. Their quest leads them to the habitat of the phoenix-like simurgh – a mystical feathered figure in Iranian mythology – but when they get there, they only find a lake in which they see their own reflection.
The Simurgh is directed by Thierry Moral, with music by Alla Abu Amra, and is performed by French-born, London- and Paristrained Nelly Amar