The Days of Awe: Meditations for Selichot, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur

David Chevan with Frank London and the Afro-Semitic Experience | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 14, 2003)
• Original Release Date: August 14, 2003
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Reckless DC Music
• ASIN: B0000C47PY
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #190,141 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Bassist and composer David Chevan's first solo album is a a collection of instrumental interpretations of traditional music for the Jewish Holy Days of Selichot, Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. The centerpiece of the album are six original arrangements of transcriptions from the recorded High Holy Day cantorial repertoire of the legendary Yoselle Rosenblatt. This album is a groundbreaking work if only because it is the first time that a jazz musician (or any instrumental musician) has ever made a recording solely devoted to the music of the Jewish High Holy Days.

Accompanying Chevan on much of the album is his working group, The Afro-Semitic Experience including Alvin Benjamin Carter, Jr. on drum set and hand drums, Baba David Coleman on hand drums, Mixashawn.com on tenor sax, Will Bartlett on tenor sax and clarinet, Stacy Phillips on lap steel guitar, acoustic resonator guitar and violin, and Chevan’s long time partner and collaborator Warren Byrd on piano. On the remainder of the album Chevan has put together a trio featuring himself along with trumpeter Frank London, a founding member of the legendary Klezmatics, and Afro-Semitic member and Grammy award winning dobro master Stacy Phillips.

Most important to this album is the instrumental interpretation of the ancient Jewish traditional of cantorial singing known as Hazzanut. Hazzanut or Chazzones as it is also known is a singing tradition that is at the root of most Ashkenazic (Eastern European) Jewish music. The Jewish cantors chanting in the synagogues of Europe were influenced by a distinct mixture of Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and Eastern European scales and melodic figures. The cantors, known as Hazzanim, would use these figures and scales to improvise spontaeous original melodies in prayer to God. They often used krechts, or sobbing sounds and other distinctive vocal techniques in their hazzanut to bring the prayers to extraordinary vocal heights. This music, in turn, influenced later more secular Jewish musical traditions that have become better known to the American mainstream as Yiddish song and Klezmer. Every track on this recording is informed by and contains contemporary interpretations of! hazzanut.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fantastic Fusion!, January 31, 2004

By 

Erik L. Contzius "fan of all trades" (White Plains, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Days of Awe: Meditations for Selichot, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur (Audio CD)

David Chevan and the Afro-Semetic Experience is doing what few artists can do well: fuse Jewish sacred music with a popular idiom. Very often, I feel that other people's attempts at doing this fall short of both the Jewish and the popular, but you can hear from this recording that Chevan and his group are deeply spiritual, and they preserve the spirit of Yossele Rosenblatt on this recording in a new and refreshing way. His virtuoso bass along with Warren Byrd on the keys (SUCH a natural, this man!), Stacy Keach on Dobro (what SOUL!), and the rest of the ensemble make you long for the original recordings of Rosenblatt. I never thought that Jazz was an appropriate genre to be introduced into Jewish spirituality... Chevan has changed my mind forever!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jews for Jazz, August 29, 2006

By 

I. Levy "The Text Tractor" (SF Bay Area) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Days of Awe: Meditations for Selichot, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur (Audio CD)

There may be nothing new under the sun, but there are more things under heaven and earth than any of us have dreamt of. And here's one of them, a brand new interpretation of historic Jewish prayer music, jazzed up in the best sense of that word. Chevan, Byrd, and the gang are master musicians and adept at the delicate welding operation required to fuse these two musical traditions into sound that is a rare pleasure to listen to. Meditative, uplifting, surprising, and never ordinary.