THE MILKEN ARCHIVE OF AMERICAN JEWISH MUSIC PART 2

The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music is a newly recorded collection of Jewish music, both sacred and secular, that has developed over the course of Jewish life in America. The repertoire, in its remarkable breadth and diversity, reflects the history, evolution, and variety of the Jewish experience in America. It bears witness to Jewish continuity and renewal through more than five millennia, revealing universal qualities that can speak to people of all faiths and cultures.

More than 600 works have been newly recorded on 50 CDs thus far for this extensive, multiyear recording project. The Milken Archive is the result of the vision and initiative of Lowell Milken, Chairman and Co-Founder of the Milken Family Foundation, whose love of Cantorial music deepened into a recognition of the value and scope of Jewish music in general. The Milken Archive seeks to inspire, educate, and entertain as wide an audience as possible by emphasizing the intrinsic artistic value, historical importance, and broad appeal of this eclectic and ever-expanding musical literature.

The recordings in the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music will be released and distributed by Naxos American Classics over a period of several years. Approximately fifty individual compact discs, focusing on composers and specific Jewish themes, were released in September 2003.

The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music seeks to discover and preserve the varied forms of musical expression, both sacred and secular, that have contributed significantly to American Jewish culture and to the music world in general, and to make this repertoire readily available to the public through these recordings. Some of these works are relatively unknown, and many have potential appeal beyond their original function and the audiences for which they may have been intended. However, they demonstrate the universality of the Jewish musical experience.

The Milken Archive preserves for future generations particular areas of American Jewish music that now live mainly in memory or on fading scores. These include the music of the once-vibrant Yiddish theater, masterpieces of the American Golden Age of Cantorial art, and the rich body of music composed for the American synagogue in the first part of the 20th century, which was rarely recorded. In order to bring to light less familiar works of many composers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, written in a Jewish context or on Jewish themes, the Milken Archive recording project avoids rerecording popular compositions without specific Jewish connotations by celebrated Jewish composers (for example, well-known concert works of Bernstein, Copland, and Gershwin) that have long been a part of the musical mainstream.

Upon conclusion of the individual CD release cycle, at a future date to be announced, the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music will release a comprehensive box set comprising twenty thematic volumes of several discs each, arranged according to historical themes, liturgical and social functions, and musical genres. The compilation of this box set will contain at least 35 percent more recorded material than is being released on the individual CDs. The box set will include rare historical reference recordings, DVDs of oral history excerpts, and more extensive and detailed liner notes, and a separate volume of essays by leading scholars in related fields. These additional recordings, as well as the extensive written and interactive features will be offered exclusively as part of this deluxe box set, which will be geared primarily for aficionados, libraries, educational and religious institutions, and the interested general public. (The individual CDs will continue to be available after the 20-volume box set is issued.)

The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music is an ongoing, multifaceted work-in-progress that looks to the future. Richard Sandler, Executive Vice President of the Milken Family Foundation, has noted that one of the Archive’s guiding principles is to not only discover and present the unique body of American Jewish music on disc, but also to support the recordings with educational and audiovisual materials to ensure a lasting cultural impact. Work continues on a library of videotaped oral histories, to date comprising more than 800 hours of interviews with composers, performers, and legendary personalities, which can serve as a resource for students, scholars, documentary filmmakers, and cultural historians. The Milken Archive also hopes to enlarge and enhance the concert repertory for performers and audiences alike, and to stimulate live performances. This is in fact already taking place: immediately following their recording sessions, several of the participating artists and ensembles began including works from the American Jewish music repertoire, which were entirely new to them, in their regular concert and touring programs.

An additional objective is the compilation and publication of historical documentation concerning American Jewish music—its performance traditions, the contexts in which it originated, and the social, religious, intellectual, and political forces that inspired its creation. The Milken Archive will be complemented by a book synthesizing the music and its history, and a full curriculum on American Jewish music for use at the secondary school and university levels, as well as for adult and continuing education.

An important example of this kind of ongoing activity was the international conference-festival on American Jewish Music, jointly sponsored by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, took place in New York City on November 7–11, 2003. Titled Only in America—Roots, Memory and Identity: Jewish Music in a Land of Freedom, this five-day event, the first of its kind ever held, featured both scholarly activities and musical performances and will herald the 350th anniversary of American Jewry to be observed in 2004. The academic programs included panel discussions and seminars featuring distinguished scholars, leading experts, and renowned composers on a wide range of topics pertaining to the sources and development of Jewish music in America—such as the development of American Jewish liturgies, Yiddish popular song and the music of the Yiddish theater, the Sephardi musical experience in America, and the influence of Hassidic music in America, to name only a few. The musical offerings included several festive concerts of orchestral and choral repertoire, performed by leading artists in major venues; performance practice workshops in choral music and “klezmer” styles and techniques conducted by distinguished coaches; several chamber music events; and a “sing-in” of a major work.

All proceeds from the sale of the Milken Archive recordings and educational materials will be directed back into the Milken Archive’s nonprofit programs in furtherance of educational and cultural goals.

Sincerely,

Cantor Elihu Feldman