Jonathan Klein's Hear O Israel

Short documentary on Jonathan Klein's Hear O Israel: A Sabbath Service in Jazz. Tells the remarkable story of how the teenage son of a rabbi wound up recording a sacred service he composed for a Jewish youth group with some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, among them Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter. Includes interviews with composer Jonathan Klein and journalist Allan Ripp.

[@robincook1697]

Bob Applebaum, a wonderfully talented composer of Jewish choral music, when he was unofficial "composer in residence" at the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, IL, wrote a complete jazz Friday night service for jazz trio & choir. We used to perform it every other year.

[@ellenorchid01]

That's fantastic. Do you happen to know if there is any recording of this jazz service? I'd love to hear it. By the way, are you by any chance the Robin Cook, who's an MD and wrote all those great thrillers?

[@robincook1697]

@@ellenorchid01 Bob has a website with recordings of some of his pieces, but I don't remember any of the jazz service being there. A fairly major publisher has published several of his pieces. He made a poor quality recording of one of our "performances" of the service & I have the CD of that, but I think it only went to members of the choir. & no, I'm not the author. From what I understand, his is a pseudonym. Tangentially, a very dear friend of mine, Corky Siegel, 1 of the top blues harmonica players in the world (the Siegel Schwall Band was 1 of the creators of the blues rock genre & he is the creator of Chamber Blues, a fusion of blues & chamber music with a string quartet) has recorded an as yet unreleased album of Chamber Blues arrangements of Jewish pieces with a noted Chicago cantor.