Arts & Entertainment
About
4•1
Gail Zimmerman
Arts Editor
The Gerard Edery Ensemble
East Meets West
The Gerard Edery Ensemble and Cantor
Alberto Mizrahi perform pieces from
the Sephardic and Ashkenaz oral tradi-
tions — songs in some dozen languages,
including French, Spanish, Ladino,
Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic and English —
4 p.m. Sunday, April 22, at Temple Israel
in West Bloomfield, at the synagogue's
annual Laker Concert.
Composer, singer and guitarist Edery
was born in Casablanca and raised in
Paris and New York City. Speaking several
languages through-
out his childhood,
he absorbed a vari-
ety of musical tra-
ditions spanning
three continents.
Cantor Alberto
Influenced by
Mizrahi
classical, flamenco,
jazz and folk
techniques, his virtuoso guitar playing
reflects a fusion of styles; today he is rec-
ognized as one of the leading interpreters
of Sephardic song and its rich heritage
of French, Spanish and Judeo-Spanish
melody. His ensemble brings an ancient
repertoire to the contemporary stage, bol-
stered by new arrangements and original
compositions.
A Greek-born tenor and cantor of
the historic Anshe Emet Synagogue in
Chicago, Cantor Mizrahi, who has been
4,c ws
Nate Bloom
saw
Special to the Jewish News
Film Notes
Shia LaBeouf, 20, stars in the film
Disturbia, opening April 13. He plays
a young man who becomes sullen
after the death of his father. He gets
into trouble and
is sentenced to a
period of house
arrest. In a plot
twist similar to
Rear Window, he
spends a lot of
time looking out
his windows and
observing his sub-
urban neighbors.
Shia LaBeouf
He begins to sus-
pect that one of them (David Morse)
is a serial killer. Carrie Ann-Moss
plays his mother and Sarah Roemer
plays his love interest.
LaBeouf grew up in a troubled Los
Angeles home. His father, who isn't
Jewish, got hooked on drugs, and
Shia's parents divorced. His Jewish
40
April 12 2007
hailed as "the Jewish
Pavorotti," is a versatile
stage performer as well
as a prominent interpreter of the Hebrew
liturgy. At home in both cantorial melody
and the classical secular repertoire — he
performs in nine languages — he has
soloed in concerts at Carnegie Hall,
London's Queen Elizabeth Hall and Tel
Aviv's Heychal Hatarbut.
For complimentary concert tickets,
call Lillian White at Temple Israel, (248)
661-5700.
Concert Of Remembrance
The Jerusalem Quartet is composed of
four young musicians who began playing
together in 1993, when they were still in
their mid-teens. Together for more than
a decade, they have evolved into sophis-
ticated interpreters of the string quartet
literature.
The ensemble made its University -
Musical Society debut in 2005 to great
mother barely scraped by, and Shia,
to put food on the table, somehow
managed to get comedy clubs to put
him on as a stand-up comedian at
the age of 12. He got his big break as
a star of the Disney Channel series
English and stars Halle Berry. It is
scheduled to open this fall. Bier also
is working on a film related to the
Holocaust.
Even Stevens.
The seventh annual Downtown Seder
was held in New York on March 28
at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
This year, like in past years, there
was quite a lineup of Jewish celeb
guest "performers," including
actress Tovah Feldshuh, famous
architect Daniel Libeskind and sing-
ers Jill Sobule, Neil Sedaka and
Debbie Friedman. Past year high-
lights include comedian and now U.S.
Senate candidate Al Franken singing,
"Go Down Moses"
and rock legend Lou
Reed reading the
part of the Wicked
Son.
Downtown Seder
founder and head
Michael Dorf real-
izes his seder
Michael Dorf
attracts some fanat-
Shia, who was bar mitzvah, has
deftly avoided the child-actor curse,
landing starring roles in good films
like I Robot, Holes and The Guide to
Recognizing Your Saints. He will host
Saturday Night Live on April 14.
Opening in some theaters nation-
wide on April 13 (the Maple Art
Theatre in Bloomfield Township is
a possibility, but check your local
listings) is the Danish film After the
Wedding, which was Oscar-nomi-
nated for Best Foreign Film. It tells
the story of a man involved in chari-
table work in India who returns to
Denmark to secure a big donation.
Susanne Bier, a Danish Jew and
the daughter of German Jews who
fled to Denmark during the Nazi
period, directed the film. Bier's next
film, Things We Lost in the Fire, is in
Seder News
acclaim and returns to Ann Arbor in a
UMS concert at 4 p.m. Sunday, April 15,
in Rackham Auditorium. The program
includes Haydn's Quartet in f minor,
Tchaikovsky's Quartet No. 1 in D
Major and Barber's Quartet for Strings
("Adagio for Strings"), an unofficial
American anthem of mourning, played
after the deaths of Presidents Roosevelt
and Kennedy, as well as at the televised
prayer service held at Ground Zero about
six weeks after 9-11.
The Jewish Federation of Washtenaw
County will honor Yom HaShoah
(Holocaust Remembrance Day) in con-
junction with UMS and the Jerusalem
Quartet performance. Preceding the
concert, the community is invited, at 3
p.m., to a ceremony at the University
of Michigan Alumni Center's Founder's
Room honoring the memory of those who
perished in the Holocaust. For more infor-
mation about the program and specially
priced tickets ($30.60) to the concert, go
is fans. He says, "This year, I got Neil
Sedaka for the first time. There are
people who are coming to this thing
– I don't want to say it's the wrong
reason – but they bought a pair of
tickets for $300 because they're
Sedaka fans and they want to see
Neil do five minutes of something in
a seder."
Meanwhile, English Jewish rocker
Graham Gouldman, who wrote an
incredible number of big rock hits
and was a founding member of the
very popular rock band 10cc, cel-
ebrated Passover at a seder in the
Arizona home of his adult daughter.
Pressel Prevails
On April 1, Morgan Pressel, 18, of
Boca Raton, Fla., won the Kraft-
Nabisco Championship golf tourna-
ment. This tournament is ranked as
one of the four major events on the
Ladies Professional Golf Association
tour, and Pressel is the youngest
golfer ever to win an LPGA major.
The cute, blond, pixie-like Pressel
was only 12 when she qualified for