Wednesday, December 5
Israeli Folk Legend
Chava Alberstein
LAXSON AUDITORIUM | 7:30 p.m.$18 Adult | $16 Senior | $14 Student/Child
"Alberstein easily cuts across linguistic and cultural barriers . . . she garners comparisons to such artists as Leonard Cohen, Warren Zevon or Elvis Costello . . ." — Billboard Magazine
Performing a soulful blend of traditional folk and pop music, Israel's Chava Alberstein has nearly 50 recordings and numerous gold and platinum records. Alberstein speaks for a people, a culture, a country. From songs of love, peace, and oppression, to melancholy tunes about loss and poverty, Alberstein's music is laden with the bittersweet tension between the national and universal. She is a performer who breaks boundaries with her message and unifies listeners with her spirit.
There is something about Israeli folk singer Chava Alberstein's voice, something fundamentally yearning and soulful, that transcends language, so it hardly matters whether she's singing in Hebrew, Yiddish or English. The emotions, from love to fear, freely translate. Her concerts are an enchanting voyage into the human soul, the heart of the Jewish people and the land of Israel. The Israeli singer's concerts are also personalized and warm, as Alberstein disarms the audience with witty stories and interesting descriptions of her Hebrew and Yiddish lyrics.
Polish-born Alberstein is undoubtedly Israel's most accomplished singer, having made nearly 50 recordings since the late 1960s, many of them now gold or platinum. She has also written a children's book, hosted a weekly children's TV show, acted in several feature films and produced a documentary film about modern Yiddish poets. In other words, Alberstein is not your typical pop star. To understand her place in Israeli popular culture, you'd have to combine Ella Fitzgerald, Janis Joplin, and Joan Baez into one singer — she's got that kind of stature over there.
Like American folk singer Joni Mitchell, Alberstein possesses a rare combination of passion, sensitivity, anger and intellect. Her voice is warm, husky, and ripe, with a knowing, mature sexiness. Sometimes exploding with sheer, passionate intensity, she is equally capable of small moments of touching intimacy. Her glorious alto, supported by a consort of subtle acoustic instruments, conveys every possible shade of emotion as she travels between nostalgic klezmer-flavored Yiddish folk songs and Modern Hebrew language poems about hard-won mundane moments and sudden alienation.
However, Alberstein has much more to offer than just a gorgeous set of pipes. She's also an exceptional songwriter who composes beguiling melodies. Considering her country's unrelenting volatility, Alberstien's lyrics articulately express courageous sentiments. She touches on a wide range of topics in her music, from general subjects about Israel, the country and its problems, to very intimate subjects of people, old age, love, jealousy and life's simple gifts.
"As a child, my mentors were American folk singers like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, plus all kinds of blues, gospel and spiritual artists," Alberstein said. "They taught me that it was not enough to just be an artist who expresses her own personal feelings of love or anger, that I should allow myself to be a citizen also."
A liberal advocate of a rapid, peaceful settlement of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities, Alberstein stirred outrage with a striking version of the traditional Passover song "Chad Gadya." "I turned it into a modern song of violence where one is chasing the other and no one wants to be the one who stops chasing," Alberstein said. "In the end, the big winner is the Angel of Death."
On the political nature of her work she said, "I'm not exactly a political artist, but when you really can't stand it anymore, when you believe it's a moral issue, or an injustice is happening, you have to speak up and say something."
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