WATCH: A Beloved Cantor Gives Jewish Prayer A Jazzy Twist
Jewish music meets the roaring 20’s in a new single that has just been released drawing key inspiration from jazz, klezmer and prayer. The song, Sheyibone, performed by singer and cantor, Aryeh Leib Hurwitz, expresses one of the most fundamental Jewish prayers, beseeching God to rebuild the Beis Hamikdash (Jewish Temple in Jerusalem), ushering in the period of global unity and harmony.
“To me, it’s a prayer, maybe the ultimate prayer, a tefiloh does not go by without these words recited,” Hurwitz explained. “The world is filled with forces in constant opposition, but to create harmony we have take these discordant, sometimes even troubling rhythms, and bring them together. Music is similar in that sense, two very different sounds coming together to create one harmony, one beautiful sound. That was the inspiration for Sheyibone.”
Raised in Brooklyn, Hurwitz has never shied away from exploring new creativity in his music. An admirer of Pavarotti, Rosenblatt and Moshe Koussevitzky, the singer expressed his desire to give Sheyibone a new, enthusiastic sound. The sound of celebration.
With an eclectic musical arrangement featuring Big Band Jazz, the single is a lively—and surprisingly diverse—interpretation of the famous melody, arranged by conductor Meir Briskman. Listening to the track, one is reminded of the singers of the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s who took the world by storm with their brash, innovative style. “It will make you want to pray and swing.”
Sheyibone has been produced in various forms over the years, including an earlier interpretation made famous by Moshe Koussevitzky. In this ‘Jazzy’ rendition Hurwitz maintains that Chazzonus feel.
The music video is of a live rendition featuring 17 big band musicians, a conductor and a cantor in a slightly different version than the single which has just been made available to the public earlier this month. Sheyibone can be found on all music streaming stores such as iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Music, Spotify, Mostly Music and more.
“There’s a lot more music in the pipeline”, Hurwitz says. Having recently performed at the Berlin Philharmonic, and in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, the Big Band-Chazzonus rendition is another page in the young singers career.
WATCH:
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO