March 21 • 2019 39
jn

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Pair started Teiku to preserve, 
revitalize old melodies.

J

onathan Taylor and Josh Harlow 
came to know each other as musi-
cians before they came to know 
each other as friends.
Taylor, a percussionist, and Harlow, 
a pianist, performed throughout Ann 
Arbor as their careers expanded with 
combined appearances. 
Their immersion in 
jazz improvisation and 
composing launched 
their bond.
The friendship led 
to the discovery of a 
common observance 
in their separate family 
celebrations of Passover. 
Instead of relying on 
traditional melodies for songs voiced 
around seder tables, each family com-
bined widely used lyrics with unique 
melodies passed along by their indi-
vidual forebears. In each family, the 
distinct yet different melodies traced 
back to 18th- and 19th-century villages 
of Ukraine and Poland.
With that discovery, the two devel-
oped Teiku (Hebrew for unanswered 
question) to document, revitalize 
and perform each other’
s familiar 
tunes. When they appear March 29 
at Kerrytown Concert House in Ann 
Arbor, the friends will be joined by 
other musicians to introduce for-
ward-looking adaptations of the ances-
tral sounds.
The concert will include saxo-
phonist-clarinetist Peter Formanek 
and bassists John Lindberg and Will 
McEvoy.
“Teiku feels like something that’
s 
bringing together two aspects of my 
life that formerly were completely 
separate,
” says Harlow, 24, now living 
in Chicago and regularly performing 
jazz in a duo with Formanek and psy-
chedelic rock in a duo with drummer 
Emerson Hunton.

“I grew up in a Conservative family 
outside Boston and went to a Jewish 
day school. Separately, I was engaging 
in jazz and other kinds of instrumental 
music on piano and percussions. To 
put these two streams of things togeth-
er with somebody I like is great.
”
Taylor thinks that 
discussion of the 
unique melodies served 
as motivation for tran-
scribing, arranging and 
performing them.
“We spent time on 
our own and then 
worked together to col-
laborate on new ideas 
and ways to present the 
music,
” says Taylor, 28, who regularly 
introduces song cycles of his original 
compositions and appears with a band 
called Saajtak in presenting electronic 
and hard rock numbers.
“The idea is to transmit music so 
that it can continue to survive and also 
embody the spirit of the music. In our 
performances, we discuss our families 
and history of the music as we know 
it.
”
Both Taylor and Harlow, who have 
appeared at Kerrytown in other pro-
grams, teach privately. Taylor, who 
grew up in Ann Arbor, completed a 
jazz studies program at the University 
of Michigan. Harlow was in a similar 
program at the Oberlin Conservatory 
of Music.
“Since we started performing Teiku, 
people have approached us with 
Passover melodies from their families,
” 
says Taylor, who will participate in a 
traditional family seder in contrast to 
Harlow’
s more improv plans with fam-
ily travels to Iceland over this holiday. 
“
As a side project, we’
d like to docu-
ment other people’
s melodies for an 
archive and arrange them for the band 
repertoire.
” ■

music

Old Into New

details
8-10 p.m. Friday, March 29, 
at Kerrytown Concert House 
in Ann Arbor. $10-$15. 
Kerrytownconcerthouse.com. 
(734) 769-2999.

THE DOCTOR IS IN:

A conversation with 
Philip J. Stella, MD 

Medical Director, Oncology Program 
St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, Ann Arbor

Cancer Thrivers Network 
for Jewish Women presents

Moderated by Cheryl Chodun
award-winning journalist

WHEN: Wednesday, April 17, 2019 

 
Registration 11:30am 
 
Kosher Lunch 12pm 
 
Speaker 12:30pm

WHERE: Temple Shir Shalom
 3999 Walnut Lake Road, West Bloomfield

This event is free and open to the community 
thanks to a generous grant from the 
Sandra and Alfred Sherman Women’s Health Fund.

RSVP to Andrea Nitzkin at 248.592.3988 or 
anitzkin@jfsdetroit.org by April 10.

