Keep HASC Fans Guessing

I

f we jog our memories back a few years, we can still remember those star-studded advertisements for HASC concerts which had Jewish music fans eagerly anticipating the upcoming show. But since Eli Gerstner took over HASC’s production in 2016 for its 29th annual concert, the anticipation has been intensified by a veil of secrecy. These days, pre-concert talk about the line-up is all guesswork and rumors, because there’s no knowing who will be smiling down from the stage on the big night.

And with the suspense building up, top- secret suits Eli Gerstner just fine.

Truthfully, most aficionados would agree that the more you learn about Jewish music, the more you feel for its secrets. Knowing the little-known songs, the famous but wrongly accredited compositions, the obscure composers, and the lyrics which everybody sings wrong are part of being a music insider. Eli Gerstner, who was always the guy at the kiddush who could tell you where the niggun sung for Kedushah was from, who composed it and who released it in what year and on which album, loves those secrets.

He views this newly imposed secrecy behind the HASC lineup as part of what makes the show great, keeping the program out of the box. “The HASC show is entertainment, but I have my eye on educating the crowd musically as well. We have today’s stars on the HASC stage, and then we have the groups which we could never have if we advertised, because their names just don’t speak to people. But when they start to sing, they bring the house down. They are the best-kept secrets in the shadows of Jewish music, and I get the chance to put them up there.”

So the top-secret roster of entertainers, which no one besides Eli Gerstner and HASC chairman Jeremy Strauss knows is actually a highly creative device which broadens the possibilities for the annual concert.

At last week’s HASC 32 concert, for example, besides Yaakov Shwekey and many other acts, the concert featured a comeback for Aish, the Abie Rotenberg-Shlomo Simcha duo. “They did their Aish medley, and it was like, hit, hit, hit, one amazing song after the other. The audience was going crazy. People had no idea that these songs which have become classics and are sung all over — songs like ‘Ilan,’ ‘Mi Adir,’ and ‘Habeit’ — were theirs. It was a revelation.”

Another surprise for those who remember those early bands of the 1970s was a revived Ohr Chodosh, who received the only standing ovation of the evening. Country Yossi, Heshy Walfish, and Nachum Deutsch performed a medley of their classics, including “Shir Hamaalos” and “Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh,” in which the entire audience joined the chorus “u’lener tamid ekach li, es aish ha’akeidah, u’lekorban akriv lo es nafshi, es nafshi hayechidah.”

“I could never have advertised Ohr Chodosh,” Eli explains, “but there they were on stage, doing their thing, showcasing their glorious contribution to Jewish music, and the entire hall was on their feet.”

Despite the fact that most people today have no idea of the origins of those songs, even the younger members of the audience know them. “I’m always surprised by the songs my own teenagers know,” says Eli. “If they know a song from 30 years ago, that tells me it’s a classic. And they definitely do know ‘Shir Hamaalos’ and ‘Bilvavi.’ ”

Eli says that even people in the industry don’t know who composed some of the classics they themselves sing as part of their repertoire, as he discovered during preparations for this year’s concert. “I hired Mordechai Shapiro for a HASC debut. When we first spoke, I said ‘Mordechai, I want you to sing 15 minutes of your own songs, then I have a legendary composer coming on, and you’ll sing a medley with him. But I can only tell you who it is two weeks before the show.’ Of course, he was dying to know who it was, but I didn’t tell him. Then, two weeks before the concert, I said, ‘Mordechai, are you ready? It’s Yishai Lapidot.’ ”

Silence.

Then, “Yishai Lapidot from Oif Simchas? Are we doing an Oif Simchas medley?”

“No, his compositions. ‘Aleh Katan’…”

“What? He wrote ‘Aleh Katan’?

“Yes. And Dedi’s ‘Hu Yigal Osanu,’ and…”

“He wrote ‘Hu Yigal Osanu’?”

“Yes, and ‘Vekovei Hashem Yachalifu Koach.’ And ‘Modeh Ani Lefanecha’…”

“I don’t believe it! I sing these songs at weddings every night. I had no idea….”

“Of course,” says Eli, “Mordechai was really excited about it, and his reaction was mirrored in the concert hall. When Nachum Segal announced Yishai Lapidot, there were some cheers, but when he sang ‘Aleh Katan,’ the crowd roared. They gave such respect to a really under-recognized composer. And that is what I mean by musical education.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 744)

You spend hours in the studio or on stage, tweaking the niggun you hope will be the season’s hit or singing what the audience wants to hear. But when you’re on your own, which song do you find yourself connecting to this season?

One that I love is “Memalei Kol Almim,” an old Breslov niggun with an added leibedig part by Shaya Gross, which Rabbi Meir Duvid Farkas made popular. The words are very profound and I have a real affinity for songs that have a chazzanus piece and a lot of depth, and then rise into a mood of spirit and joy.
—Shlomo Simcha

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 743)

“W
ell, that’s a good question,” says veteran composer and lyricist Reb Pinky Weber. “Sometimes the singer comes to me with words he wants to sing. Other times I get inspired when I say Tehillim or daven, and I realize that there is no song on particular words. I was once davening Selichos when the words “Kah heratzeh lanu bezuh hasha’ah” jumped out at me. Such powerful words — they became a powerful, fast but prayerful song for Avraham Fried’s album Bein Kach U’Bein Kach. There have also been many times when I’ve sat with the singer and we’ve opened up a siddur together.”
One thing he never does is put new words to a tune he’s already composed. “I can’t do that, because I need to have words in my mind to put me in the right mood and drive the direction of the melody. I’d rather leave a tune without words than push in words after the tune already exists, because for me, the words are the neshamah of the song.”
(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 743)

YITZY BALD, veteran songwriter and head of the New York Boys Choir, has been a prolific composer of Jewish music hits since he was a bochur. His very first composition to go public was the upbeat “Yerav Na,” which was released in 1989 as a single, produced by Avi Fishoff (later producer of the Shevach and Solid Gold albums). “Yerav Na” was so popular that Yitzy estimates it was sung on no less than 15 subsequent albums —and it became one of SHLOIME DACH’s trademark hits after it was released on his One Day at a Time album (1996).

“Every year, I buy the Jewish sheet music book produced by Avremi G for all the wedding bands, and ‘Yerav Na’ is still in there. I’m a bit surprised that it’s still playing, but I’ve been told that there’s a special ‘Yerav’ line dance that the guys like doing at weddings. Amazing that a song I composed sitting on my bed in Eretz Yisrael, sick in my dorm room at Yeshivas Mercaz HaTorah in Talpiyot, has been around for almost 30 years!”

Looking back, Yitzchak Fuchs, singer and songwriter famous for his “LaHashem Haaretz” and countless other songs, finds it hard to single out one memorable performance among the thousands of simchahs and kumzitzes he’s played.

But there was one sheva brachos in London which seemed to rise above the course of nature. Yitzchak had injured his hand in a fall while working in his garden in Tzfas. It wasn’t broken, but highly painful, and he had no idea how he would play at the simchah in London, where he was to enter in the middle as a surprise for chassan and kallah. “I felt like I was being thrown into the lions’ den as I walked in there. But the atmosphere in that room was crackling with surprise and electricity. I started to play and sing “Yiram hayam umelo’oh,” and the crowd sang and clapped along. I looked down at my hand and saw it was playing, hard, but somehow it didn’t hurt anymore. I thanked and praised Hashem in a haze of joy. Looking back, that whole evening was both my most anxiety-ridden and most joyful performance ever.”

 (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 742)

He grew up watching his father work musical magic, but it was a producer across the ocean who really tapped into Ruvi Banet’s potential. The son of Seret Vizhnitz composer Reb Chaim Banet, the younger Banet — who is Motti Steinmetz’s producer and a sought-after arranger and musician in his own right — says that he breathed music from his early childhood. “I give a lot of credit to my father. He allowed me into the studio when his compositions were being recorded. I watched Mona Rosenblum and Moshe Laufer at work, and I always wanted to know how everything was done. With a lot of curiosity, patience, and perseverance, baruch Hashem, I eventually fulfilled my own dream of writing musical arrangements.”

Ruvi’s first efforts were arranging his father’s songs. “I wrote the music for ‘Nachamu Ami’ on my father’s Ohavei Hashem album, and people heard it and saw that I knew what I was doing.” One of those listeners who took notice was Gideon Levine, who had a popular recording studio in New York and was producing his Best of the Best albums at that time. “I was 23 years old when he brought me to New York for a month to work on his arrangements. I would say that opened the door wide to more and more music.”

 (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 742)