Sunday, October 17 | 7:30 pm
Music & Conversation
At Temple Israel of Hollywood
7300 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90046
Co-presented by TIOH Arts & Culture, Los Angeles Jewish Symphony, Dr. Noreen Green, Artistic Director, and the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music
A celebration of Jewish women’s voices, the centerpiece of this concert-lecture is excerpts from Women of Valor, an award-winning cantata by composer Andrea Clearfield, performed by members of the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony under the direction of Dr. Noreen Green and featuring Grammy award-winning soprano Hila Plitmann and mezzo-soprano Iris Malkin. Inspired by a midrash, Women of Valor highlights the stories of women of the Bible through the contemporary lens of several women writers, including Ellen Frankel and Sandy Shanin. The event also includes Maria Newman’s Shirat Hayam (Song of the Sea) and excerpts from Sharon Farber’s Only A Book. The evening concluded with a discussion with the artists moderated by the inaugural dean of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Eileen Strempel.
…Plitmann sings with not only clarity but with abandon and with a real resonance to the text…
Hila Plitmann
Grammy award-winning vocalist, songwriter and actress Hila Plitmann is known worldwide for her unique expressive quality, her effortless, glittering voice and her ability to present challenging works of music with dexterity.
Ms. Plitmann has performed on many notable albums and continues to accumulate an impressive recorded catalogue, including Hans Zimmer’s Grammy award-nominated soundtrack to The Da Vinci Code; Eric Whitacre’s Good Night Moon with the LSO; Oscar-winner John Corigliano’s song-cycle Mr. Tambourine Man with the Buffalo Symphony (for which she won a “Best Classical Vocal Performance” Grammy); and Richard Danielpour’s Grammy award-winning recording The Passion of Yeshua, with the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra.
Learn more at https://hilaplitmann.com
Iris Malkin
Israeli-born mezzo-soprano, pianist and vocal coach Iris Malkin graduated from the Jerusalem Academy of Music with a Master’s Degree in Vocal Performance and an Artist Diploma in Piano, with a Vocal Coaching emphasis. Ms. Malkin has performed widely both as a singer and as a pianist in concerts and festivals in Israel, Europe and the United States, and her performances have been broadcast worldwide.
In addition to the mainstream operatic repertoire, Ms. Malkin has distinguished herself in the world of Hebrew and Jewish works, as well as the highly nuanced Spanish song repertoire. She is dedicated to sharing her passion for art song performance with audiences around the world. Malkin has performed under the baton of Pierre Boulez during the 2006 Lucerne Festival, including collaboration with Boulez’s celebrated Ensemble Intercontemporain, and in 2011 was a guest soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of the South Bay, performing songs from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn and De Falla’s El Amor Brujo.
Learn more at https://www.irismalkin.com/.
Susan Morgenstern
Susan Morgenstern, an actress since age five, crossed into directing while co-teaching American Musical Comedy with Tom Lehrer at UC Santa Cruz. She taught and directed at Stage Door Manor, a renowned performing-arts camp in upstate New York. In Los Angeles, for Theatre West, Susan directed All in the Timing, Just Too Cool, Saturday Night at Grossinger’s, and The Socialization of Ruthie Shapiro. At Falcon Theatre she directed Leap, Surviving Sex, and The Psychic; for Cabrillo Music Theatre Happy Days, a New Musical, by Garry Marshall; and for Skylight Theatre, an INKubator series and an extended-run production of Meryl Cohn’s comedy Reasons to Live. Susan consultants as show director for Disneyland, directs The Braid’s salon shows and mentors NEXT fellows.
Andrea Clearfield
Andrea Clearfield is an award-winning composer of music for orchestra, opera, chorus, chamber ensemble, dance and multimedia collaborations. She has been praised by the New York Times for her “graceful tracery and lively, rhythmically vital writing,” the Philadelphia Inquirer for her “compositional wizardry” and “mastery with large choral and instrumental forces,” the LA Times for her “fluid and glistening orchestration” and by Opera News for her “vivid and galvanizing” music of “timeless beauty.”
Dr. Clearfield’s works are performed widely in the US and abroad. In 2020, she received the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage International Artist Residency, was named the David Del Tredici Residency Fellow at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY and was awarded a Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Fellowship in Taos, NM. She is currently composer-in-residence with National Concerts at Carnegie Hall. Commissions in 2021 for Dr. Clearfield include a cantata to a libretto by Ellen Frankel for the Mendelssohn Club, funded by the NEA, and a new work for chorus and orchestra for the University of New Mexico. Her music is published by Boosey & Hawkes, G. Schirmer, Hal Leonard and Seeadot and recorded on the Bridge, Sony, MSR, Albany, Crystal and Innova labels.
More at www.andreaclearfield.com
Sharon Farber
A member of the Executive Committee for the Motion Pictures and TV Academies, four- time Emmy award-nominee, 2013 Society of Composers and Lyricists Award-winner for Outstanding Work in the Art of Film Music, 2012 Visionary Award-winner in Music by The Women’s International Film & Television Showcase, Telly Award-winner and member of The Academy of Motion Pictures, Sharon Farber is a celebrated film, TV and concert music composer.
Ms. Farber has worked with networks and cable broadcasters such as NBC, CBS, Showtime and the WB, as well as writing music for feature films. Her score for the film When Nietzsche Wept (Millennium Films) was commercially released and performed live in concert. Ms. Farber was recently featured at Lincoln Center in Women Warriors, curated by Maestra Amy Anderson, and appeared in a concert event celebrating women composers sponsored by the Alliance for Women Film Composers (AWFC). The International Film Music Critics Association wrote, “Composer Sharon Farber wowed the crowd with a suite of music from three of her scores: Children of the Fall, When Nietzsche Wept and The Dove Flyer…”
More at www.sharonfarber.com
Maria Newman
Hailed by Fanfare Magazine as “genius,” and by NPR’s iconic critic Jim Svejda as “hugely musical, bewitching, profound and playful, with an instantly recognizable and unusually appealing musical personality…one of the most charming and distinctive composers of her generation,” Maria Newman is an award-winning composer, violinist, violist, pianist, conductor and pedagogue. She has been featured as composer and soloist in such diverse venues as the United States Capitol Building, Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and major Hollywood music scoring stages. Her extensive library of works includes orchestral, choral, ballet and chamber works, as well as scores for a large number of historic silent films. Ms. Newman’s compositions have been commissioned and performed worldwide by such organizations as the Annenberg Foundation, the Mary Pickford Foundation, Daniel Pearl Concerts for World Peace, Martes Musicales Festival in Mexico City, Prague Piano Association and numerous others.
Ms. Newman has premiered many new works for violin and viola in celebrated concert halls throughout the US and Europe. She was the critically acclaimed viola soloist for the Grammy award-winning album Symphonic Hollywood in a performance of Miklos Rozsa’s Viola Concerto with the Nuremberg Symphony.
More at http://www.malibufriendsofmusic.org/composermarianewman.html.