In the first 13 years of the Louis Lewandowski Festival, around 80 choirs from all over the world came together to sing the music of the great Berlin composer Louis Lewandowski and to get to know new works of synagogal music with a predominantly European influence. Our musical journey took us through the entire Western Jewish world, from Berlin via Southern Germany to Eastern Europe, Italy, France, the USA and Israel.

In this, the 14th year of the Louis Lewandowski Festival, for the first time only music by Oriental Jews will be heard, whose melodies, keys and choice of instruments are very much influenced by the musical culture of their Arab countries of origin in the Middle East and North Africa.

Not only are the keys and rhythms of this music different, there is also no polyphonic choral singing in oriental Jewish music.

Last December, for the first time in the history of the Louis Lewandowski Festival, we heard songs from Yemen and the Middle East, accompanied and interwoven with Arabic musical instruments. The Berlin audience was so enthusiastic about these rather unfamiliar sounds from Israel that many expressed a desire for MORE.

So in May I went to Israel in search of musicians and ensembles from the oriental music tradition and found them:

• • The women’s ensemble Yamma Teiman from Yemen

• • the Persian singer Jeannette Rotstein Yehudaiyan with her accompaniment

• • The Atanu Ensemble consists of 4 Paitanim (singers of new and centuries-old religious poetry) and 7 oriental musicians from Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Morocco and other countries.

• • the exceptional Yemeni musician Yair Tzabari.

All the male singers work as cantors in Israeli synagogues and are also paitanim.

Yemeni women, on the other hand, who had and have no religious functions in their communities, sing the songs that Yemeni women used to sing while working in the house and in the fields.

Jeanette Rotstein Yehudaiyan was discovered by Persian radio as a young voice and then emigrated from Iran alone and without parents as a teenager because her father, a famous Persian paitan and traditional Jew, did not allow her to sing in public as a woman. This year, the Synagogal Ensemble Berlin (SEB) will also be performing oriental and Sephardic choral pieces arranged for choir.
Let yourself be carried away into a world of fascinating rhythms, oriental songs and virtuoso instrumental music!