Showtime

A list of upcoming shows, performances and events around the country.

By BARRY DAVIS
Cameri Theater (photo credit: Lauren Izso)
Cameri Theater
(photo credit: Lauren Izso)
Degibri’s dozen
Jazz saxophonist Eli Degibri will launch his latest album, Twelve, at a concert at the Zappa Club in Tel Aviv on December 14. He will be accompanied by the sidemen who appear on the recording – teenagers pianist Gadi Lehavi and drummer Ofri Nehemya, as well as bass player Barak Mori.
Twelve is Degibri’s sixth release since his 2003 debut In the Beginning, and his first since he returned to Israel following a decade and half based in New York.
Degibri first came to prominence when, at the age of just 19, he landed a prestigious sideman berth with iconic pianist Herbie Hancock’s band. He performed with Hancock for two years before striking out on his own. The saxophonist has also played all over the world with other high-profile jazz musicians, such as drummer Al Foster, saxophonist Jimmy Heath, bassist Ron Carter, trumpeter Clark Terry and pianist Brad Mehldau.
For tickets and more information: *9080 and www. zappa-club.co.il
Jaffa spring
Choreographer Hillel Kogan will present two of his most thought-provoking works at the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv tonight, Friday evening (8 p.m.), as part of an international dance showcase. Rites of Spring is based on the eponymous composition by Igor Stravinsky, which was first performed exactly 100 years ago. Thirty-nine-yearold Kogan uses Stravinsky’s dramatic sounds to convey a sense of conflict of a victim torn between loyalty and betrayal. It is a solo dance which adheres strictly to the original score, in which the choreographer addresses different types of sacrifice.
These include patriotic fervor, making sacrifices for a better personal future, suicide terrorism and soldiers who volunteer for risky military combat duty. Kogan believes that sacrifice is the act of the individual not of a group.
Kogan’s reading of the Rites of Spring also references earlier dance renditions of the work, by the likes of Vaslav Nijinsky, Maurice Béjart and Pina Bausch.
The second work, Ohavim Aravim (Loving Arabs) features Kogan and Adi Boutrus and offers a humoristic angle on an encounter between an Arab Israeli dancer and a Jewish Israeli choreographer. The dance feeds of issues relating to coexistence, national identity and humus.
For tickets: (02) 510-5656
Gypsy princess comes to town
Actors from the Budapest Operetta Theater and singers from the Budapest Operetta and the Ra’anana Symphonette Orchestra will join forces on Thursday for the start of a nineperformance run of the The Csardas Princess at the Israel Opera House in Tel Aviv (until December 19).
The Csardas Princess (a.k.a. The Riviera Girl and The Gypsy Princess) is an operetta in three acts with music by Hungarian Jewish composer Emmerich Kalman, and a libretto written by Leo Stein and Béla Jenbach. It is a boisterous and highly colorful production, which has been providing audiences the world over with captivating entertainment for an entire century.
For tickets and more information: (03) 692-7777 and www.israel-opera.co.il
Mozart in Haifa
The Tel Aviv Philharmonic Choir will join forces with the Jerusalem Festival Orchestra on December 21 (12 noon), at St. John’s Church in Haifa, for a performance of Mozart’s Requiem. Sovietborn conductor Leonti Wolf will direct the on-stage proceedings.
Before making aliya Wolf was the youngest person in the former Soviet Union to be appointed, at the age of 27, as the leading conductor at his native opera house in Novosibirsk in Siberia.
In 1990 he turned down an appointment as musical director of the Opera House in Novosibirsk, deciding instead to move here. Since then, he has conducted the top orchestras in the country, including the young Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Israeli Chamber Orchestra, Ramat Hasharon Camerata, Beersheba Sinfonietta and the Musica Nova Consort.