So that’s how Israeli musicians make a living
In a country where you only need to sell forty thousand records to go platinum it always boggled my mind how Israeli musicians make a real living. Sure, most A-list pop musicians aren’t suffering – but they still have to do a few obligatory nights at the Caesarea amphitheater to keep up with their bills. While making it big in Israel is as difficult as everywhere else in the world, touring in Israel isn’t exactly an exhausting activity. Musicians are always within reasonable driving distance from their homes, so a good night’s sleep is their own bed is almost guaranteed. The Israel Independence Day concert circut is also considered a lucrative time, with many musicians playing multiple concerts in one evening and many even traveling abroad to play for Jewish communities in the Diaspora.
And some musicians just get lucky. Take Yael Naim for example. Naim was launched into the spotlight from obscurity (and is apparently back there again) after her song poptastic hooky song “New Soul” was featured on the commercial for the MacBook Air.
What’s a sure way to make a potential fortune? Easy answer. Have a hit in the most populous country in the world. And that is kind of what happened to Sarit Hadad. Her gargantuan hit song “In the Heat of Tel Aviv” has been translated into Chinese and recorded by Chinese pop singer Yumiko Cheng. According to Ynet it “has been sweeping the music charts in China and Hong Kong in the last few weeks and has also become a big hit at dance clubs.” On his blog, Chinese producer James Ting writes about how he came across the song, the recording process and expresses how excited he was to hear about the positive reaction to the song in Israel.
You can see the original followed by the Chinese cover below. Which one do you like better?
1776 comes to Israel
A scene from Israel Musicals' production of 1776.
A newer player in the field is Israel Musicals. After putting on shows like Man of Lamancha and The Sound of Music, the group is currently featuring the venerable Broadway extravaganza 1776.
I remember seeing the movie as a young teen when it was released way back in the ’70s, and thoroughly enjoying it, so it was without trepidation, I took some of my own kids to the production’s Jerusalem debut.
Kind of timely, with our own coalition back room negotiations in full swing, the musical exposes in an affectionate manner the behind the scenes tug and pull leading up to the writing and signing of the Declaration of Independence in the summer of 1776 in Philadelphia.
The audience at the Gerard Behar Center was a pretty homogenous collection of middle-age to older observant American immigrants. It’s likely that most of them don’t know Hebrew well, and to get out and see a quality musical in English is a real treat.
Featuring a cast of amateur and professional American/Israeli actors and two actresses portraying the wives of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the show was a little long, but the performances were fine, the singing professional, and the spirit downright revolutionary.
1776 will be playing around the country through March. It’s not going to make you forget about Broadway, or off-Broadway, but if you like old-fashioned, wholesome musicals, 1776 will do the trick. And it provides a reminder of what real leadership really looks like, a timely tap on the shoulder in these trying times.
Working for the weekend
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life
As we all know, everybody’s working for the weekend. And here in Israel, “the weekend” is a fluid concept. Most of us work on Sundays through Thursdays, with the weekend consisting of Friday and Saturday (the Jewish day of rest). Many offices and places of business are, however, open on Fridays, for at least a half day, which means that for many in the country, the weekend consists of one day. Many immigrants to Israel never fully get used to the schedule.
In the past, there have been efforts to change things, instituting a four- or five-day work week based on Sundays off, which would at least have the benefit of allowing Saturday nights to not be “school nights.” Debate in the Knesset has raged on the issue, with many arguing that Fridays make for the better standardized day off. Much of the opposition to shortening or otherwise tinkering with the work has been based on religious grounds, but trade groups and big business bodies have also expressed concern over the specter of diminished productivity.
But with the global economic crisis starting to be strongly felt in these parts, now it’s the businesses that are aiming to make their unavoidably lower output levels more affordable by lowering manpower costs. As a result, Haaretz reports, four-day work weeks, and corresponding cuts in worker benefits, are already being unilaterally imposed by many Israeli employers:
Hundreds of employees will have to get used to this new reality at Sapiens, Numonyx and Keter, as well as some hotels and other enterprises. The rationale is obvious: saving 20% of wage costs and operating costs on days when the firm is shut down. For workers, it means a 20% salary cut, and the “disappearance” of vacation days due to them by law, replaced by forced vacation days.
According to a lawyer interviewed by Haaretz, unless the employees complain, the companies are completely legitimate in their unilateral slashing of benefits, which extend beyond vacation days and include lowering deposits into schemes for pensions and stipends of various types. And are the workers complaining? In a climate where many feel fortunate to have jobs at all, not so much.
“In normal conditions I would have been angry,” [Rechovot-based Applied Materials engineer] Ami says, “but we recognize the reality. Just two months ago the company laid off 10% of its workforce, and luckily I survived that wave.”
Apparently, firms in the US have been taking similar measures since the economic fallout first took place in the fall, and the British government is considering going to a three-day week. Of course, over there, Sundays were days of rest to begin with.
Image of the view from a high-rise in Rechovot courtesy hofnik from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
Hometown Jerusalem girl wins Grammy
Hila Plitmann - just a simple Yerushalmi...
Jerusalem-born and raised soprano Hila Plitmann received her award for Best Classical Performance as vocalist on a recording of Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan (2000), an original composition for full orchestra and amplified soprano by John Corigliano using the lyrics of Dylan and performed by the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by JoAnne Falletta.
Since graduating from the prestigious Juillard School of Music in New York in 1997, Plitmann has gone on to become a staple on the international music scene, regularly premiering works by leading composers while cementing her reputation in musical theater, recordings and film, including the soundtrack work as a soloist for the The Da Vinci Code. CNN reported “Plitmann’s glissandi sail above the petty pulpits of earthly doctrine with an ethereal ease that argues for Plitmann’s pairing with [Kathleen] Battle or Dawn Upshaw.”
But Plitmann is as down to earth as they come. Living in LA now with her husband, conductor Eric Whitacre and their three-year-old son Esh (Fire in Hebrew), Plitmann is unaffected by the accolades and the glitter of the Grammys. So much so, that she ended up missing the ceremony last week to attend a birthday party for a friend of Esh’s.
“I’m still a little surprised we won,” said Plitmann. “Just thinking about the level of artistry and the level of respect I hold for the others who were nominated in the category – I didn’t really expect this.”
With her family all still living in Jerusalem (her father is a professor of botany at Hebrew University), and socializing with many Israelis in LA, Plitmann remains an Israeli at heart. A few years ago, she collaborated with Whitacre by writing and singing the original poems for Five Hebrew Love Songs, a collection of Whitacre compositions.
And, if she wasn’t busy enough, she studied Tae Kwon for five years and has received a black belt. The debate has gone back and forth about how terrible it is that Israelis move abroad and abandon their country. But in Plitmann’s case, she’s presenting an amazing image of Israel to the world, and much like her expansive vocal style, filling us with pride at a home town girl made good.
Nostalgia Sunday – Yemenite Embroidery
Filed under: Art, design, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Profiles
Back in the early Sixties, most kids’ mothers wore frilly cocktail aprons to entertain. Not my Israeli mother. Hers looked like this.
And her miniskirts and pantsuits looked like this.
My mother, a singer of international folksongs, had a great collection of gowns. Many were created at Esther Zeitz, a Jerusalem house of fashion that employed a team of Yemenite seamstresses that sat, day in and day out, stitching threads of silver and gold onto splendid garments. Who needed jewels when you had something like this bedecking your neck?
Wearing Yemenite embroidery was very cool among Israeli women who came of age during the 1940s and 50s. This dress was made for my mother when she was a teenager during the 1948 War of Independence.
In the Sixties, after the 1967 war and the reunification of Jerusalem, she combed the Old City looking for a velvet jacket with Bedouin embroidery to wear over a black velvet gown. She found one, too.
In the early Seventies, she scored some Bedouin-style embroidered garments from the Arab Women’s Union of Bethlehem, an embroidery cooperative.
But my favorites will always be the Esther Zeitz outfits. As I recall it, Zeitz – whom I remember as a large woman with swollen arms – closed down in the Eighties when she became too ill to manage. It would be nice to find out more about what happened to the workshop, which was located at the junction of Ben Yehuda and Bezalel streets – I think it is a hairdressers’ today.
My sisters and I wore many of these garments during the Go-Go Eighties. Today, however, they are fragile – the polyester fabric is forever but not the cotton threads that hold down the metallic threads. We are not sure what will happen to this collection, and so decided to document the clothes that, for us, are part of a happy memory.
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