This is a brilliantly arranged piece for Chanukah by Jason Robert Brown. My school chorus had the chance to perform it at our winter concert last week and I would like to post the recording up here for your listening pleasure.
Keep in mind that this is a high school chorus and the performance was not without fault, both on our part and on the part of the accompanist. We also had to condense some of the harmonies because it got so dissonant and difficult.
It also features yours truly on the tenor solo and my girlfriend on the soprano solo.
"This table, he is over one hundred years old. If I could, I would take an old gramophone needle and run it along the surface of the wood. To hear the music of the voices. All that was said." - Doug Wright, I Am My Own Wife
I love the arrangements and how smoothly the songs flow one into the next. Hah, but as a fluent Hebrew speaker, much of the pronounciations made me giggle a little because they were quite off. But it's a hard language to master, so I can totally understand.
Congrats to you and your choir! That's pretty darn good for a high school group! Even when you guys didn't get all the notes or rhythms dead on, you still got the feel of the piece exactly right. All the rehearsal in the world can't make some groups feel the exuberance and joy that you guys brought to it. I just came back from hearing the L.A. Master Chorale doing the piece tonight (they did a beautiful job), so it's weird to hear it twice in one night after never having heard it before!
And to Akiva's point, I actually thought by the standard of most American kids (which is admittedly a fairly low standard), the Hebrew pronunciation wasn't so bad. A couple of fuzzy vowels here and there, but far better than I expected.
Thanks to you and your choir and your teacher and your accompanist for doing the "Chanukah Suite" and for doing it with such enthusiasm and spirit. Happy Chanukah to you all!
This is such an honor coming from you. And, sorry about the cuts we made... It seemed the best thing to do considering our chorus level and the amount of time we had to work on it. I'd love to hear/sing the full version one day.