JERUSALEM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA JSO

BY ED BRUCE edbrucevegas@yahoo.com

54 Jewish string players....what could be better than that ?

Actually it was a full orchestra....all first team players and nothing could be better than that.

This part of the the Charles Vanda Masters Series at Ham Hall on the UNLV campus...same venue as last night...great theatre....great sound.....crowd of 300....times must be tough ! I was thinking what would the cost of 80ish players be to fly to Las Vegas for $50 a ticket...... 300 in the crowd....somebody must be taking a beating here and its sad with our economy such as it is that people are not buying.....the value of this to me is super substantial......so many symphonys to hear so little time.....I heard three tonight.

3 minutes late...... no cell phones...22 minute intermission and one of the great symphonys on this planet ! I do not know composition or music writing but I do know what I like and what is good and I still hear very well at 64. Whatever the great symphonys are on earth this one is right with the best of them. Interesting to watch the musicians working hard on concentration and reading score.....the conductor really has his touch and tint on the work by gametime and looks to just orchestrate what he hears. Conductor Leon Botstein just right, just humble and obviously the coach that put this team together. Program notes so enlighting....this dude the President of Bard College in New York....obviously a man of character, education and expertise.

Leadoff....two national anthems and The Twelve Tribes of Israel.....long for an opener but it easily established the orchestra with its deep resonate tones as a kickoff to a quality evening.

Then it got better...Serenade..... by Leonard Bernstein.....gee West Side Story was not all he wrote...what a career and what lovely notes put into this....music like writing...all the words are there you just have to put them in a creative order.....can't be that many notes to chose from either but here Berstein sure got a lot of them in an order I liked. To highlite the evening this mostly violin solo by Robert McDuffie (think the Irish shoved a ringer into this Jewish symphony) just fabulous ! McDuffie with a long list of credits playing a 1735 Guarneri del Gesu violin (whatever the hell that is....like a Strad I guess....it sounds good) played with movement, attention to detail and great viruosityy.....we are talking Perlman, Bell, Heifetz class here. Interesting as I write this I have the tape of PBS concert for Bersteins 90 anniversary on....multi tasking.....this with David Steinberg conducting a touched version of West Side Story.....great overlap conincidence. In the program ....."The work is scored for full string orchestra, harp and the following percussion instruments: timpani, snare-drum, tenor-drum, bass-drum, triangle, suspended cymbal, tambourine, two Chinese blocks, glockenspiel, xylophone, and chimes. " The beauty of all this, that none of it got in the road of the violin, yet all participated and all just for me....sweet !

I thought after McDuffie the best was over and it really was but I had room in my heart for another 40 minutes of strings....this..... Aaron Copelands Symphony no. 3. Nice....some variations of horns from some of his more famous works.....nothing second class about this tho.

How lucky I am to be alive in Las Vegas where I got world class ballet on Wednesday and this on Thursday.....grab for the gusto and see this stuff.....eternity is forever with not strings !

If they would have started on time they could have had a perfect score...anyway 97 A+