Geraldine Auerbach in conversation with Yaacov Fisher

Bringing Jewish music to the concert stage: London and Jerusalem

Geraldine Auerbach MBE
From 1983, Geraldine began discovering and celebrating Jewish music. From 1984 to 2000 she ran a pioneering biennial month-long, Jewish Music Festival which included new commissions and many UK premières performed by local and international artists. Over those years and since then with mini festivals, more than 80,000 people attended 675 concerts and recitals organised by Geraldine and her teams. Nearly one thousand children performed traditional songs specially chosen, and a cantata composed for them by Stephen Glass, celebrating 350 years of Jewish life in Britain in 2006. Focussed mainly in London, there were also many regional events introducing British audiences to many genres of Jewish music. Several performance groups were established to perform different aspects of Jewish music. All the festival programmes have been digitised and can be seen on the JMI website here https://www.jmi.org.uk/archive/music-festival-programmes/

Economist-come-music producer, Jeffrey (Yaakov) Fisher, entered the world of Jewish music actively only four years ago, with a mission to bring Jewish music to the forefront of the stage. All his activity takes place under the auspices of the non-profit organization – Spectacular World of Jewish Music (SWJM) – that he established in February 2018. SWJM has staged four major events in Jerusalem – incorporating 25 separate concerts – up to now, the most recent event a major Hanukah Jewish Music Festival last November-December, partnered by the Jerusalem Municipality. SWJM hopes to take its Jewish music messages to other cities in Israel in the future, and also possibly to abroad. On SWJM’s drawing board are several ambitious projects for 2022 and beyond, one with significant international involvement. SWJM’s singular approach to staging Jewish music is called the “multi-genre” approach, with SWJM events presenting Jewish music to audiences in several different genres. The rationalization of theapproach is to enhance audiences’ – either Jewish or non-Jewish – appreciation of the rich musical heritage of the Jewish people.