RELEASE followed by ALBUM NOTES:
World-class musicians David Grisman and Andy Statman, reunite to further explore the passionate music of their shared Jewish heritage with New Shabbos Waltz, August 8, 2006 on Acoustic Disc Records. New Shabbos Waltz is the long-awaited sequel to their highly acclaimed Songs of our Fathers (ACD-14).
This collection of timeless Jewish melodies runs the musical gamut of human emotion ? from the ecstatic joy of "Anim Zemiros" (Song of Glory) propelled by the infectious drumming of Rock legend Hal Blaine, to the bittersweet elegance of "Oifen Pripitchick" (On the Hearth), highlighted by the lush tones of Enrique Coria’s classic guitar. "Oifen Priptchick" and "Yerushalem Shel Zahav" (Jerusalem of Gold) were featured in the Schindler’s List soundtrack, and these renditions are true instrumental masterpieces. The lighthearted title track, "New Shabbos Waltz" includes playful slide guitar work by Bob Brozman and bouncy bass playing by Samson Grisman, in contrast to the deep emotional power of "Ani Ma’amin" (I Believe) composed by Rabbi Ezriel Fastag in a cattle car en route to the Treblinka death camp.
Andy Statman’s hypnotic clarinet and spirited (and spiritual) mandolin combined with David Grisman’s ethereal mandolin as well as mandocello, octave banjo-mandolin and banjo-guitar, take listeners to a place they have never been before - transcending cultural boundaries and speaking straight to the heart.
Although the music on this collection is rooted in Jewish Culture, it is largely unknown to the rest of the world. We can all be grateful to these two gifted artists for sharing this inspiring traditional music with music lovers everywhere.
ALBUM/SONG NOTES:
Andy Statman / David Grisman
Like Songs of Our Fathers, Andy Statman and David Grisman’s previous collaboration, this CD presents what in Yiddish are called "velt’s niggunim" -- literally "the world’s melodies"- meaning that members of many different Jewish communities are familiar with them and sing them on the Shabbos, festivals, and other occasions. However, outside of Jewish circles, these religious melodies are unknown. So you might say that they are "velt’s niggunim" (world’s melodies) that most of the velt (world) has never heard before.
Although this is an instrumental album, the majority of the original songs alternate between the twin themes of Shabbos and Jerusalem, which are closely related. Jewish mystics state that what Shabbos is in time, Jerusalem is in space.
Shabbos represents the fusion of time and eternity. The six days of the week reenact the six days of creation, which merge into the seventh day of Shabbos: the day when we commemorate God’s cessation of creative work by setting aside our creative work; the day of rest and peace which the sages of the Talmud call a "foretaste of the World to Come," when struggle and effort stops, and we experience the fruit of our labors. Shabbos is above and beyond all days, a window to the dimension beyond process and beyond time.
Jerusalem is the "place" where the finite and Infinite meet. Rabbinic tradition describes the city’s highest point of holiness, the site of the Holy Temple that King David built, as the beginning point of creation and the "gate of heaven." Thus, for thousands of years until this very day, Jews have prayed facing Jerusalem. As the ancient prophets declared, Jerusalem is the spiritual channel for the prayers of all humanity, and the eternal home of the Jewish people.
This is the beginning of the story behind these melodies. The rest, they will speak for themselves.
1. Avinu Malkeinu "Our Father, Our King"
A composition of great antiquity, this melody is sung as a refrain to the confession of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. When the Holy Temple stood in Jerusalem, this was the one time of the year when the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) would enter the inner sanctum to receive a divine vision and to intercede on behalf of the people.
"Our Father, our King: Show us grace, and answer us, though we have no worthy deeds.
Treat us with charity and kindness, and save us!"
2. Anim Zemiros "Song of Glory"
This still popular centuries-old German-Jewish melody has come to be sung at the conclusion of the Shabbos morning service, to the lyrics of a hymn by the great medieval mystic and pietist, Rabbi Yehudah HeChassid (1150-1217). Drummer Hal Blaine invests the performance with what the Chassidim call hislahavus, enthusiasm and fervor.
"My soul desired the shelter of Your hand,
To know the entire secret of Your mystery"
3. Pischu Li "Open the Gates"
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (1925-1994), founder of San Francisco’s House of Love and Prayer at the height of the hippie era, and subsequently the neo-Chassidic community of Modi’in, Israel, wrote this song on the way to a concert in 1959. It is still sung widely during the Hallel prayer in many synagogues.
"Open for me the gates of the Holy Temple, so that I may enter and praise G-d.
This is the gate of heaven, through which the righteous may pass"
(Psalms 118)
4. Shabbos HaYom LaShem "The Sabbath, God’s Day"
This familiar melody combines a medieval Shabbos table song with Yiddish lyrics, probably woven together during the early 1900s, at a time when many Jews were falling away from the observance of the Sabbath. This version is dedicated to the late Rabbi Moshe Drazin of Providence, Rhode Island, the community’s "sage-in-residence" who often sang it at local Chassidic farbrengens (gatherings).
"If only I had strength, I would run through the streets
And cry from the depths, ‘Shabbos, Shabbos, Shabbos!’
The Shabbos is God’s day, the Shabbos is God’s day...’ "
5. Mim’komkha "From Your Place"
Another heartfelt melody of the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach written in 1974 in San Francisco, this tune is sung to a phrase from the Kedushah ("Sanctification") of the Shabbos Shemoneh Esreh Prayer. Standing in unison, the congregation supplicates God to reveal Himself from His "place," meaning the most hidden, sublime level of the Divine Oneness, and illuminate this world of multiplicity, which He created and pronounced good, from Jerusalem.
"When will You reign in Zion? May it be soon, in our days.
Forever may You dwell there, exalted and sanctified in Jerusalem, Your city,
From generation to generation and for all eternity."
6. New Shabbos Waltz
Reminiscent of an American country waltz, this melody was composed in New York by Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner (1906-1980), illustrious dean of the Chaim Berlin Yeshiva. Rabbi Hutner often used to sing it on Friday night for Lekha Dodi.
7. Ya’aleh "May Our Supplication Ascend"
One of the crown jewels of the music of the Lubavitcher Chassidim, this anonymous composition is sung during the Yom Kippur night selichos (penitential prayers). However, the previous Skolye Rebbe (Rabbi Dovid Yitzchak Eizik Rabinowitz, 1896-1976) used to sing it during Hallel on Rosh Chodesh and festivals. In many communities, it is still sung on these occasions.
8. Oifen Pripitchik "On the Hearth"
Oifen Pripitchik is a late 19th century Yiddish song written by Mark Markovitch Warshavsky (1845-1907), a lawyer born in Zhitomir who subsequently lived in Kiev, and (being a practical man) in his spare time wrote some of the greatest Yiddish music of his generation. This song’s moving lyrics describe the transmission of the Jewish heritage from one generation to the next. Bittersweet as only a Jewish melody can be, one wonders if it was ever more poignant than the way it is performed here, in the hands of Grisman and Statman.
"On the hearth burns a little fire, and the house is warm.
And the Rebbe (school master) teaches the little children the Alef-Beis (alphabet)"
9. Klezmer Dance
This Klezmer classic was part of the standard repertoire of Jewish instrumentalists at the beginning of the 20th century, and is typical of the genre of Chassidic rikkudim (dances) being composed at that time.
"When one serves God with such holy joy that one begins to dance, all evil forces are banished from the ‘feet’ (i.e. the lower levels of creation, more closely related to this physical world); all severe heavenly judgments are mitigated; and one becomes fit to receive all manner of blessings."
(Chassidic Master Rabbi Nachman of Breslev)
10. Yerushalayim Irkhah "Jerusalem, Your City"
Rabbi Ben Zion Shenker, Andy’s longtime friend and one of his musical mentors, wrote this contemporary Chassidic waltz. A man whom Andy has often described as "one of the national treasures of Jewish music," singer-composer Ben-Zion Shenker is also the central figure in the Modzitzer Shtibel (synagogue) on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, where the Statman family prays.
In 1968, while the young Rabbi Shenker was en route to Israel, he noticed a news article about Naomi Shemer, whose song "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav / Jerusalem of Gold" had recently topped the charts. This gave him the feeling that he had to bring a new melody as a gift to the Holy Land, and that it should be about Jerusalem. Upon opening the Siddur (prayer book), his eyes fell upon the words from the Shemoneh Esreh (Daily Prayer of Eighteen Blessings) that invoke the return of God’s Presence to Jerusalem and the reestablishment of King David’s dynasty. Moments later the tune came to mind, as if of its own volition, and Rabbi Shenker had the gift that he had sought.
11. Yerushalyim Shel Zahav "Jerusalem of Gold"
During the Six Day War, the late Israeli singer-songwriter Naomi Shemer composed this melody, which immediately became a national hit. The Mishnah (which is the basis of Jewish law, redacted by Judah the Prince during the second century c.e.) states that in ancient times, Jewish women used to wear a golden diadem on which was depicted the skyline of Jerusalem. However, the "gold" to which Naomi Shemer referred was the splendor of the holy city, and its inestimable preciousness to the Jewish people.
12. Lekha Dodi "Come, My Beloved"
This joyous melody comes from Rabbi Yerucham Chazan, a legendary early 19th century Chassidic singer-composer from the Ukraine, and tzaddik (holy man) in his own right. According to Rabbi Nachman Burshteyn of Jerusalem, an expert on Chassidic music, Breslever Chassidim have been singing it for more than one hundred fifty years. It was written to the words of Lekha Dodi, the mystical hymn written by Safed kabbalist Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz (1500-1580) with which Jews all over the world usher in the Shabbos on Friday night. The lyrics also invoke the spiritual and physical restoration of Jerusalem.
"O sanctuary of the King, royal city - arise and go out from amidst the upheaval.
Too long have you dwelled in the vale of tears; He will shower compassion upon you!"
13. Ani Ma’amin "I Believe"
Sung to the words of one of the Thirteen Articles of Faith of Maimonides (1135-1204), this melody was composed by Rabbi Ezriel Dovid Fastag, a prominent Modzitzer Chassid of the Imrei Shaul (Rabbi Shaul Yedidyah Elazar Taub, 1886-1947).
Rabbi Fastag composed it in a cattle car on the way to the Treblinka death camp, and his fellow prisoners soon began to sing it with him. Suddenly Rabbi Fastag announced, "I will give my place in the World to Come to anyone who can bring this melody to the Rebbe!" Three men jumped off the moving train: one perished immediately and two survived, one of whom somehow succeeded, albeit after the war was over, in sending the sheet music from Switzerland to the Modzitzer Rebbe in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The niggun was sung in many concentration camps as an anthem of Jewish victory against all odds.
"I believe with complete faith in the coming of the Mashiach (Messiah),
And even though he may delay, I still expect him to arrive every day."
Postcript: About Chassidic Music
Many listeners may be familiar with the connection between mysticism and music in various world religions. However, they may not know that such traditions exist in Judaism, especially in the Chassidic path founded by the Baal Shem Tov ("Master of the Good Name," Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, 1698-1760). Since its origins in the Carpathian Mountains and villages of Podolia (now the western Ukraine), the Chassidic movement has diversified and spread all over the world. Accordingly, its music has become complex and many-faceted. However, in all cases it seeks to uplift the singer, player, or listener and bring about a state of attachment to God. This is also true of the Chassidic melodies on this CD.
Through melody, one may cleave to God without being encumbered by any external spiritual garment. The effect becomes one with the cause, transcending all boundaries.
(- Chassidic Master Rabbi Shmuel of Sochatchov)
Notes by David Sears
<- Back to Projects
World-class musicians David Grisman and Andy Statman, reunite to further explore the passionate music of their shared Jewish heritage with New Shabbos Waltz, August 8, 2006 on Acoustic Disc Records. New Shabbos Waltz is the long-awaited sequel to their highly acclaimed Songs of our Fathers (ACD-14).
This collection of timeless Jewish melodies runs the musical gamut of human emotion ? from the ecstatic joy of "Anim Zemiros" (Song of Glory) propelled by the infectious drumming of Rock legend Hal Blaine, to the bittersweet elegance of "Oifen Pripitchick" (On the Hearth), highlighted by the lush tones of Enrique Coria’s classic guitar. "Oifen Priptchick" and "Yerushalem Shel Zahav" (Jerusalem of Gold) were featured in the Schindler’s List soundtrack, and these renditions are true instrumental masterpieces. The lighthearted title track, "New Shabbos Waltz" includes playful slide guitar work by Bob Brozman and bouncy bass playing by Samson Grisman, in contrast to the deep emotional power of "Ani Ma’amin" (I Believe) composed by Rabbi Ezriel Fastag in a cattle car en route to the Treblinka death camp.
Andy Statman’s hypnotic clarinet and spirited (and spiritual) mandolin combined with David Grisman’s ethereal mandolin as well as mandocello, octave banjo-mandolin and banjo-guitar, take listeners to a place they have never been before - transcending cultural boundaries and speaking straight to the heart.
Although the music on this collection is rooted in Jewish Culture, it is largely unknown to the rest of the world. We can all be grateful to these two gifted artists for sharing this inspiring traditional music with music lovers everywhere.
ALBUM/SONG NOTES:
New Shabbos Waltz: A Collection of Timeless Jewish Melodies
Andy Statman / David Grisman
Like Songs of Our Fathers, Andy Statman and David Grisman’s previous collaboration, this CD presents what in Yiddish are called "velt’s niggunim" -- literally "the world’s melodies"- meaning that members of many different Jewish communities are familiar with them and sing them on the Shabbos, festivals, and other occasions. However, outside of Jewish circles, these religious melodies are unknown. So you might say that they are "velt’s niggunim" (world’s melodies) that most of the velt (world) has never heard before.
Although this is an instrumental album, the majority of the original songs alternate between the twin themes of Shabbos and Jerusalem, which are closely related. Jewish mystics state that what Shabbos is in time, Jerusalem is in space.
Shabbos represents the fusion of time and eternity. The six days of the week reenact the six days of creation, which merge into the seventh day of Shabbos: the day when we commemorate God’s cessation of creative work by setting aside our creative work; the day of rest and peace which the sages of the Talmud call a "foretaste of the World to Come," when struggle and effort stops, and we experience the fruit of our labors. Shabbos is above and beyond all days, a window to the dimension beyond process and beyond time.
Jerusalem is the "place" where the finite and Infinite meet. Rabbinic tradition describes the city’s highest point of holiness, the site of the Holy Temple that King David built, as the beginning point of creation and the "gate of heaven." Thus, for thousands of years until this very day, Jews have prayed facing Jerusalem. As the ancient prophets declared, Jerusalem is the spiritual channel for the prayers of all humanity, and the eternal home of the Jewish people.
This is the beginning of the story behind these melodies. The rest, they will speak for themselves.
About The Songs
1. Avinu Malkeinu "Our Father, Our King"
A composition of great antiquity, this melody is sung as a refrain to the confession of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. When the Holy Temple stood in Jerusalem, this was the one time of the year when the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) would enter the inner sanctum to receive a divine vision and to intercede on behalf of the people.
Treat us with charity and kindness, and save us!"
2. Anim Zemiros "Song of Glory"
This still popular centuries-old German-Jewish melody has come to be sung at the conclusion of the Shabbos morning service, to the lyrics of a hymn by the great medieval mystic and pietist, Rabbi Yehudah HeChassid (1150-1217). Drummer Hal Blaine invests the performance with what the Chassidim call hislahavus, enthusiasm and fervor.
To know the entire secret of Your mystery"
3. Pischu Li "Open the Gates"
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (1925-1994), founder of San Francisco’s House of Love and Prayer at the height of the hippie era, and subsequently the neo-Chassidic community of Modi’in, Israel, wrote this song on the way to a concert in 1959. It is still sung widely during the Hallel prayer in many synagogues.
This is the gate of heaven, through which the righteous may pass"
(Psalms 118)
4. Shabbos HaYom LaShem "The Sabbath, God’s Day"
This familiar melody combines a medieval Shabbos table song with Yiddish lyrics, probably woven together during the early 1900s, at a time when many Jews were falling away from the observance of the Sabbath. This version is dedicated to the late Rabbi Moshe Drazin of Providence, Rhode Island, the community’s "sage-in-residence" who often sang it at local Chassidic farbrengens (gatherings).
And cry from the depths, ‘Shabbos, Shabbos, Shabbos!’
The Shabbos is God’s day, the Shabbos is God’s day...’ "
5. Mim’komkha "From Your Place"
Another heartfelt melody of the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach written in 1974 in San Francisco, this tune is sung to a phrase from the Kedushah ("Sanctification") of the Shabbos Shemoneh Esreh Prayer. Standing in unison, the congregation supplicates God to reveal Himself from His "place," meaning the most hidden, sublime level of the Divine Oneness, and illuminate this world of multiplicity, which He created and pronounced good, from Jerusalem.
Forever may You dwell there, exalted and sanctified in Jerusalem, Your city,
From generation to generation and for all eternity."
6. New Shabbos Waltz
Reminiscent of an American country waltz, this melody was composed in New York by Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner (1906-1980), illustrious dean of the Chaim Berlin Yeshiva. Rabbi Hutner often used to sing it on Friday night for Lekha Dodi.
7. Ya’aleh "May Our Supplication Ascend"
One of the crown jewels of the music of the Lubavitcher Chassidim, this anonymous composition is sung during the Yom Kippur night selichos (penitential prayers). However, the previous Skolye Rebbe (Rabbi Dovid Yitzchak Eizik Rabinowitz, 1896-1976) used to sing it during Hallel on Rosh Chodesh and festivals. In many communities, it is still sung on these occasions.
8. Oifen Pripitchik "On the Hearth"
Oifen Pripitchik is a late 19th century Yiddish song written by Mark Markovitch Warshavsky (1845-1907), a lawyer born in Zhitomir who subsequently lived in Kiev, and (being a practical man) in his spare time wrote some of the greatest Yiddish music of his generation. This song’s moving lyrics describe the transmission of the Jewish heritage from one generation to the next. Bittersweet as only a Jewish melody can be, one wonders if it was ever more poignant than the way it is performed here, in the hands of Grisman and Statman.
And the Rebbe (school master) teaches the little children the Alef-Beis (alphabet)"
9. Klezmer Dance
This Klezmer classic was part of the standard repertoire of Jewish instrumentalists at the beginning of the 20th century, and is typical of the genre of Chassidic rikkudim (dances) being composed at that time.
(Chassidic Master Rabbi Nachman of Breslev)
10. Yerushalayim Irkhah "Jerusalem, Your City"
Rabbi Ben Zion Shenker, Andy’s longtime friend and one of his musical mentors, wrote this contemporary Chassidic waltz. A man whom Andy has often described as "one of the national treasures of Jewish music," singer-composer Ben-Zion Shenker is also the central figure in the Modzitzer Shtibel (synagogue) on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, where the Statman family prays.
In 1968, while the young Rabbi Shenker was en route to Israel, he noticed a news article about Naomi Shemer, whose song "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav / Jerusalem of Gold" had recently topped the charts. This gave him the feeling that he had to bring a new melody as a gift to the Holy Land, and that it should be about Jerusalem. Upon opening the Siddur (prayer book), his eyes fell upon the words from the Shemoneh Esreh (Daily Prayer of Eighteen Blessings) that invoke the return of God’s Presence to Jerusalem and the reestablishment of King David’s dynasty. Moments later the tune came to mind, as if of its own volition, and Rabbi Shenker had the gift that he had sought.
11. Yerushalyim Shel Zahav "Jerusalem of Gold"
During the Six Day War, the late Israeli singer-songwriter Naomi Shemer composed this melody, which immediately became a national hit. The Mishnah (which is the basis of Jewish law, redacted by Judah the Prince during the second century c.e.) states that in ancient times, Jewish women used to wear a golden diadem on which was depicted the skyline of Jerusalem. However, the "gold" to which Naomi Shemer referred was the splendor of the holy city, and its inestimable preciousness to the Jewish people.
12. Lekha Dodi "Come, My Beloved"
This joyous melody comes from Rabbi Yerucham Chazan, a legendary early 19th century Chassidic singer-composer from the Ukraine, and tzaddik (holy man) in his own right. According to Rabbi Nachman Burshteyn of Jerusalem, an expert on Chassidic music, Breslever Chassidim have been singing it for more than one hundred fifty years. It was written to the words of Lekha Dodi, the mystical hymn written by Safed kabbalist Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz (1500-1580) with which Jews all over the world usher in the Shabbos on Friday night. The lyrics also invoke the spiritual and physical restoration of Jerusalem.
Too long have you dwelled in the vale of tears; He will shower compassion upon you!"
13. Ani Ma’amin "I Believe"
Sung to the words of one of the Thirteen Articles of Faith of Maimonides (1135-1204), this melody was composed by Rabbi Ezriel Dovid Fastag, a prominent Modzitzer Chassid of the Imrei Shaul (Rabbi Shaul Yedidyah Elazar Taub, 1886-1947).
Rabbi Fastag composed it in a cattle car on the way to the Treblinka death camp, and his fellow prisoners soon began to sing it with him. Suddenly Rabbi Fastag announced, "I will give my place in the World to Come to anyone who can bring this melody to the Rebbe!" Three men jumped off the moving train: one perished immediately and two survived, one of whom somehow succeeded, albeit after the war was over, in sending the sheet music from Switzerland to the Modzitzer Rebbe in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The niggun was sung in many concentration camps as an anthem of Jewish victory against all odds.
And even though he may delay, I still expect him to arrive every day."
Postcript: About Chassidic Music
Many listeners may be familiar with the connection between mysticism and music in various world religions. However, they may not know that such traditions exist in Judaism, especially in the Chassidic path founded by the Baal Shem Tov ("Master of the Good Name," Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, 1698-1760). Since its origins in the Carpathian Mountains and villages of Podolia (now the western Ukraine), the Chassidic movement has diversified and spread all over the world. Accordingly, its music has become complex and many-faceted. However, in all cases it seeks to uplift the singer, player, or listener and bring about a state of attachment to God. This is also true of the Chassidic melodies on this CD.
(- Chassidic Master Rabbi Shmuel of Sochatchov)
Notes by David Sears
<- Back to Projects
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Waltz For Lucy