arts & life
mus i c
PHOTO BY NIR ARIELI
Press Play
The Shuffle team,
including Eliran
Avni (center)
Shuffle concert, like a
human iPod — where
a taste of Beethoven
follows a Beatles hit,
a klezmer favorite or
a bit of Broadway —
comes to the Berman.
Elizabeth Applebaum
Special to the Jewish News
details
Shuffle performs at the West
Bloomfield JCC’s Berman Center
for the Performing Arts 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, Feb. 18. $37 for JCC
members; $39 for non-members.
(248) 661-1900; theberman.org.
A
Shuffle concert is like a
musical meal that might
begin with flavors that are
sharp, tangy and sweet, followed
moments later by something that
pops and sizzles, and then sud-
denly there is a bite that is spicy
and luscious. It is all delightfully
delicious. And it is all directed by
the guests.
Shuffle is a musical group that
performs a variety of radically dif-
ferent styles in just one evening. It
could be five minutes of Brahms
followed by four minutes of Stevie
Wonder, and then three minutes
of Handel and two minutes of
Stephen Sondheim; whatever the
result, it is never the same concert
because each audience decides
what will be played.
Ready for a taste? Shuffle comes
to Metro Detroit for one perfor-
mance only at the West Bloomfield
JCC’s Berman Center for the
Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, Feb. 18.
“A Shuffle concert is so origi-
nal, so much fun, so surprising
that you can’t imagine it until
you’ve experienced it,” says Elaine
(Hendriks) Smith, director of the
Berman. “It’s always an adventure,
with something for every musical
taste.”
Shuffle is a bit of a contradiction.
The performers are professionals
who play music by some of the
world’s greatest composers from
every genre. But what set every-
thing in motion was an accident.
Eliran Avni, a native of Israel,
is the group’s pianist and creative
director whose interest in music
began when he was little. His
mother enrolled Eliran in an after-
school class where he played syn-
thesizer. By age 10, he was a seri-
ous student of piano, encouraged
both by instructors and his mother,
who attended her son’s lessons and,
“to my horror, would remember
the comments of the teacher,” he
says, laughing. If Eliran played a
bit too slow or too fast, his mother
was there to remind him what his
instructor had said.
Mother knew best. Eliran was
a naturally gifted student whose
hard work was soon rewarded: He
won a full scholarship to Juilliard
and at age 18 came to the United
States.
Together with Israeli sisters and
musicians Moran Katz, who plays
the clarinet, and Linor Katz, who
plays cello, Avni formed a small
ensemble that performed classi-
cal music. Over Shabbat dinner,
they were discussing how difficult
it was to find audiences for their
music. Soon after, Avni was work-
ing out on an elliptical machine
when his MP3 player jumped from
the first movement of Prokofiev’s
Fifth Symphony to a song by the
Pretenders. “It was jarring,” Avni
says. And wonderful.
He thought: “It would be really
cool if we could do that for the
audience.”
And that is how Shuffle came
about.
Today, the group is composed of
10 members, six of whom perform
together on stage (to accommodate
schedules). Members, including
Avni’s sisters, have other personal
(as when two of the musicians
were on leave to give birth) and
professional responsibilities. In
addition to being part of Shuffle,
Avni teaches piano at the Lucy
Moses School at Kaufman Music
Center in New York City.
The event works like this.
Audience members enter the
auditorium and receive a number
and a musical menu. When their
number is called (at random),
guests choose a song or piece from
the menu. All options have been
carefully selected by the Shuffle
team, who make certain that each
performer will have the chance for
a solo and that the music is some-
thing that most people will enjoy
or at least not find comparable
to “an immense wounded snake,
unwilling to die, but writhing in its
last agonies,” as one critic review-
ing Beethoven’s Second Symphony
wrote in Zeitung für die Elegante
Welt in 1803.
Whatever your passion, it’s likely
on the list. A Shuffle menu might
include the Beatles’ “Blackbird,”
something by the Gershwins, Ravel
and Bossa nova, a bit of klezmer,
Stevie Wonder, Brahms and Grieg
— and remember, all selections are
brief, so if your number comes up
and you desperately want to hear
the Shostakovich but your husband
insists on the Haydn, “It will be
over in five minutes,” Avni says.
Just like the audience, Shuffle
members find the unexpected at
their concerts because there is no
such thing as a predictable pro-
gram, Avni explains: “We think
we’ll know what will happen, but
then we’re surprised.”
Though music consumes much
of his life (“We’re always practicing,
rehearsing, learning something
new,” he says of Shuffle), Avni also
loves reading and going to films,
with recent favorites including
The Big Short and Carol. There is
a moment in Carol when actresses
Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara
say nothing but simply look at
each other and the understanding
and emotion in that single glace is
breathtaking, Avni says.
“When you see great artists at
work like that, you get so inspired
by the level of nuance they bring to
their craft, that intensity,” he says.
“That’s what we strive for with
Shuffle.”
*
February 11 • 2016
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