Flowering of talent
When I started sending these messages it was mainly to tell our friends about our life in Israel. But, around 2000 the intifada made them more political and urgent. Now we have little terrorism and apart from the recent war in Lebanon and the steady barrage of Kassam rockets on Sderot, life is quiet here, until the next war.
In the past two days we went to two concerts in the same building, owned by the City in a poor neighborhood, but an excellent, relatively new hall. The first concert was given by a group of opera singers organized by a local musician, Nadia Fridkovsky, who formed her own opera company. Since she was Naomi's choir director, and she is a superb pianist, we are on her mailing list. They sang a wide variety of arias from many operas, 3 sopranos, one mezzo and three men. All had beautiful voices (except one soprano who had a powerful but screechy voice). They were mostly from the former Soviet Union, and some perform at the Israel Opera Co. in Tel Aviv. There were also Ukrainian dances performed and sung by a girl's group, mostly little blond kids.
Last night we went to the scholarship giving ceremony of our friend Moshe Shamir's organization "This land is my land." He awarded 300 scholarships to kids in high schoools and colleges mainly to poor Ethiopian and Russian immigrants. This started with the ORT school in Netanya over 20 years ago, and now covers the whole country, but only Netanya residents are eligible. One of the administrators from one of the schools had been a scholarship recipient that enabled her to continue her education. There was also entertainment, a group of Israeli dancers, an Israeli choir and a piano duo. This duo is Yuval Admony and Tami Kanazawa, his Japanese wife. They are excellent, they live in Israel but travel the world concertizing. We have heard them before, but their performance of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in blue" is wonderful.
Today we also have a quartet performing at the weekly Monday Shearim concerts. So we are not short of music and culture here. The flowering of amazing talent.
In the past two days we went to two concerts in the same building, owned by the City in a poor neighborhood, but an excellent, relatively new hall. The first concert was given by a group of opera singers organized by a local musician, Nadia Fridkovsky, who formed her own opera company. Since she was Naomi's choir director, and she is a superb pianist, we are on her mailing list. They sang a wide variety of arias from many operas, 3 sopranos, one mezzo and three men. All had beautiful voices (except one soprano who had a powerful but screechy voice). They were mostly from the former Soviet Union, and some perform at the Israel Opera Co. in Tel Aviv. There were also Ukrainian dances performed and sung by a girl's group, mostly little blond kids.
Last night we went to the scholarship giving ceremony of our friend Moshe Shamir's organization "This land is my land." He awarded 300 scholarships to kids in high schoools and colleges mainly to poor Ethiopian and Russian immigrants. This started with the ORT school in Netanya over 20 years ago, and now covers the whole country, but only Netanya residents are eligible. One of the administrators from one of the schools had been a scholarship recipient that enabled her to continue her education. There was also entertainment, a group of Israeli dancers, an Israeli choir and a piano duo. This duo is Yuval Admony and Tami Kanazawa, his Japanese wife. They are excellent, they live in Israel but travel the world concertizing. We have heard them before, but their performance of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in blue" is wonderful.
Today we also have a quartet performing at the weekly Monday Shearim concerts. So we are not short of music and culture here. The flowering of amazing talent.
posted by Jack Cohen at 4:06 PM
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