by dan pine
Thirty-one years ago, “The Wiz” premiered on Broadway. If that African American take on “The Wizard of Oz” could become a hit, what’s wrong with a Jewish version of “Porgy and Bess”?
Nothing, says Aaron Blumenfeld, who is set to premiere music from his opera “Pagiel & Bathsheva.” But is his work a faithful retelling of DuBose Heyward’s classic tale (gloriously remade as a 1935 opera by George and Ira Gershwin)?
Blumenfeld says it ain’t necessarily so.
For one thing, Act One takes place in Poland and is sung in Yiddish. For another, the hero and heroine are Orthodox Jews from the Old Country –– not exactly Catfish Row. But Act Two is set in the South, and sung in the African American vernacular of the time.
Selections from Blumenfeld’s “Pagiel & Bathsheva” will be performed Nov. 18 at Trinity Chapel in Berkeley.
Says the Richmond composer, “I thought it would be great to write a sequel showing how [Porgy] goes up north, and on the way he runs into jazz, rag, barrelhouse, jug band, gospel, all the early black folk music styles. Then I realized I’m not black.”
Blumenfeld, an observant Jew and the son of a rabbi, pondered changing his main character to a Jew starting out in Europe then shifting the scene to America.
There are parallels with the Heywood/Gershwin classic: Bathsheva, a rabbi’s daughter, is Blumenfeld’s Bess, courted by Pagiel, a young Jewish mystic. The original villain, Sportin’ Life, has a counterpart in Zishe, a rival suitor for Bathsheva’s hand. Zishe kidnaps Bathsheva and steals her off to America, with Pagiel hot on their trail.
Once Pagiel arrives, he is rescued from anti-Semitic thugs by a friendly black musician, who introduces the immigrant to a strange new kind of music: the blues.
“It’s very entertaining and accessible to the modern ear,” says Blumenfeld. “On another level, it’s mystical. Pagiel has a prophetic vision, and he argues with God.”
That argument, like all of “Pagiel & Bathsheva,” is sung, some in the quintessential melodic minor style of East European Jewry, some in the raw and rollicking blues of the early 20th century.
That plays to Blumenfeld’s musical strengths. “My style is tonal,” he says. “My songs are very romantic and sweet. But when I have orchestral sections you can tell [the music] is by a modern composer.”
Around the Bay Area, Blumenfeld is a respected musical voice. He is a master of jazz and blues piano improvisation, having taught courses at U.C. Berkeley extension and given private lessons. Among his many compositions are two concert pieces, including a barrelhouse blues piano concerto.
Blumenfeld is equally dedicated to writing music based on Jewish themes. His “Holocaust Memorial Symphonic Poem” and “Ezk’roh: A Symphonic Poem for Cantor and Orchestra” have both received local premieres. He’s currently completing another Jewish opera, “Rachel,” which also features a Yiddish libretto.
That’s no problem for Blumenfeld, who grew up in a Yiddish-speaking household and who remains fairly conversant in the Mamaloshen.
He was raised in an Orthodox home in Newark, N.J., the son of a revered talmudic scholar. Blumenfeld tried attending yeshiva, but hated it so much his parents dispatched him to the local public high school (the same one attended by Jewish novelist Phillip Roth).
Blumenfeld chucked history studies at New York University to pursue music. He studied composition at Julliard, and in 1974 made aliyah to teach music in Israel.
“I was happy there,” he recalls, “but I couldn’t compose because of the noise. I wrote music with a motorcycle helmet on my head to drown out the noise.”
After nearly four years, he and his wife Barbara relocated to the Bay Area where he established his career as a music teacher and composer. He and his wife have three adult children and nine grandchildren.
Musically, Blumenfeld calls himself a revivalist. “My ragtime sounds like ragtime. My blues sounds like a blues singer had composed them. My bebop sounds like Bud Powell. I write fluently in these styles. But with music that contains the classical element, I’m totally original there.”
For many years, Blumenfeld was a devotee of the Sufi mystic Gurdjieff, but in recent years he has returned to his observant Jewish roots.
That’s not the only tradition Blumenfeld adheres to. In a world where most composers have an Apple computer and a studio full of electronic gear, Blumenfeld writes music the old fashioned way: with a pencil, a piano and musical imagination.
“I work like Bach,” he says, “sitting at a piano, hearing the overtones, looking at my tree outside my window.”
The Trinity Chamber Music Concert Series presents a concert of music by Aaron Blumenfeld, 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 18, at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana St., Berkeley. Suggested donation: $10. Information: (510) 549-3864.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California