OCTOBER 1 • 2020 | 33

Arts&Life

music

A Jewish 
Jazz Guy

See Israeli pianist 
Guy Mintus as part of 
the Jewish Film Festival.

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
I

sraeli pianist Guy Mintus knows the Motor 
City jazz scene. He has performed at local 
clubs, including Cliff Bell’
s, and his trio 
has appeared with Lady Champagne, a Detroit 
blues singer. 
Mintus had been planning a return trip to 
the metro area last May, when he would be 
performing solo to enhance the showing of 
the film Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles, one fea-
ture scheduled for this year’
s Lenore Marwil 
Detroit Jewish Film Festival. Original Mintus 
music enhances the narrative of the documen-
tary about the development of Fiddler on the 
Roof productions.
When the festival had to change into a dig-
ital platform because of COVID-19, Mintus 
accommodated the change by agreeing to 
perform live from Israel. He will be the finale 
of the event, running Oct. 4-30, and perform 
selections from the film and apart from it in 
“Miracle of Miracles: Guy Mintus Live” on 
Oct. 29.
“I want to bring people into my musical 
world,” said Mintus, also a recording artist 
who is 29 and single. “I like to take music that 
I love and is meaningful to me and reimagine 
it — give it a new spin and a new life. It can be 
Chopin; it can be Gershwin; it can be a classic 
Israeli song.
“Whatever it is, I Mintusize it.”
Mintus was drawn to the piano from the 
time he was 10. He heard a song he liked and 
asked his mother to help him sound it out on 
their keyboard. 
“It left me wanting to find more, and I 
started studying but not seriously,” he said. 
“I played some pop melodies, not practicing 
much. Then I discovered ‘
’
Round Midnight’
 

details 
“Miracle of Miracles: Guy 
Mintus Live” goes on at 7 p.m. 
Thursday, Oct. 29. culturalarts.
jcc.org/filmfest/.
Guy Mintus

COURTESY OF GUY MINTUS

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