In case you had not noticed yet, Libera has a short Christmas greeting video on their home page. We get to see some of the new faces in the group, but brace yourself for the shock when Josh and Liam speak their names. They sound like Barry White. Okay, maybe not quite that deep but they’re definitely not trebles any more.
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The boys’ and girls’ choirs from Manchester, England are being closed down, according to the article I’ve linked here. And as if that was not tragedy enough, the Boys’ Choir of Harlem is also saying good-bye. Lack of funding seems to be the problem for all of them. I hope this recession ends soon, before more is lost.
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1186884_fury_as_cash_blow_silences_young_choirs
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Santa came early this year and piled a bunch of gifts under my tree, but the darn things all say, “Do Not Open Until Christmas” so it may be a next week before I post again. I need to see what new CD’s are waiting to be unwrapped on Friday morning.
Meanwhile, I have something special. For Christmas I want to talk about a Jewish choir. I’ve mentioned before about how much I like the Yeshiva Boys’ Choir. I got curious about the faces behind all of those distinctive and interesting voices so I got their DVD titled YBC Live.
Something I always think of when I hear these guys is “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord…”. These boys smile as they belt out the words, loudly and with confidence. There are several soloists that take turns at the mike during each song and they are all really cute kids but the most charming one is also the smallest boy. He may be three feet tall but I’m not so sure about that. The director, Eli (pronounced Ellie) Gerstner introduced him as his little brother Yaakov and he has a great Munchkin voice that makes me grin whenever he reaches over his head to take the mike off the stand and belts out the lyrics like a little pro.
Naturally, the music on the DVD, unlike the Cd, has not been polished up by the studio producers, but there is always something fun about seeing a live DVD performance.
All of the boys are very accomplished, more so at singing than at dancing, although they do that well enough. Yossi Newman directs their singing and choreography which is sort of a cross between calisthenics and line dancing with a little bit of Macarena thrown in. They’re not always together on the moves, but it’s a lot of fun to watch them. A couple of the boys manage to do some fancy footwork at the front of the stage during one or two numbers.
They sing in Hebrew so I don’t have any idea what they are saying. It doesn’t matter, though.
There is one thing that I’m not happy about with this DVD and that is the mis-labeling on the cover which says “YBC Live“. It turns out that half the disc is given over to solos by Eli Gerstner and several songs by an adult trio. I don’t recall this being mentioned anywhere in the description when I ordered it. I don’t want to hear a guy's voice if he’s over 18. I’m kidding, of course. There are lots of great adult male voices out there, like…, well…, uh….that guy who, you know, heck, I’ll think of it later.
You can check out their video Kol Hamispalel on YouTube.
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First, let me wish you a most joyous holiday. I hope that every cd wish is under that tree of yours...lol.
ReplyDeleteSomething you might want to check out for Easter would be Kings College. They just recently released both on cd and dvd, the complete Handel's Messiah.