Experimental music collided with prayer songs at the Tefillalt Ensemble concert this past Thursday in the Crowell Concert Hall to open the Ring Family Concert Series. The young Israeli group offers unique twists on traditional Hebrew songs.
An experimental group dedicated to cross-cultural music making, Tefillalt features Yair Harel on percussion and vocals, Nori Yacoby on viola, and Yonatan Niv on cello. The three men synthesize Israeli world music, radical Jewish music, folk music, and rock into fast moving and at times ironic melodies.
“There is a large variety of music in Israel,” said Yacoby, “There is a huge variety of diasporas. There are people from Bombay, Iraq, the US. There is highly religious music in the temples and yet pop music in the street. It is a landscape of tradition and sound in Israel.”
The group impressively merged the traditional with the modern. Through their interpretation, they initiated old prayers into a modern context that touched the audience and left the crowd laughing.
“Tefillalt means prayer in Hebrew,” said Yacobi. “Everything we play relates to prayers: love prayers, prayers to God, it is a world of prayer. It’s constant dialogue between tradition and prayer.”
Audience members were taken with the group’s energy.
“A lot of it was really intense in a positive way,” said Tamar Matz ’08. “The cellist’s face was as expressive as his music. In one moment his face would change from being about to cry to being about to laugh.”
“I liked the piece that was about the letter from the drug addict,” said Alon Hafri ’07. “The fact that he could make a connection to God, the overlapping of texts were really cool.”
Nori described the group’s creative process.
“The music that we play evolves and changes,” said Nori.
“There is a long relationship here between improvisation and the written music. We try to get them to work together.”
Although they never change the words of the texts, the trio interprets them through their musical presentation.
“There are at least two layers to our arrangements,” Yacoby said. “First, there is the traditional music and then there is the process of editing and interpretation.”
Throughout the concert the three men chatted with the audience from the stage and then schmoozed at a small reception afterwards.
“My mother was born in Newtown which isn’t that far away,” Harel said. “It’s almost like coming home.”
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