Take a sylvan setting in the Upper Galilee, add a host of first-rate young musicians and unusual instrumental and vocal offerings, pepper it with an intimate ambiance - and voila - you have the Kfar Blum Music Festival.
by Lili Eylon
The Galilee, Israel's northern region, attracts local and foreign tourists throughout the year to its lush green landscape and well-known historical sites. But every summer, kibbutz Kfar Blum hosts a music festival which offers the visitor a unique experience.
Musicians spend two weeks at the kibbutz, the first in rehearsal and the second at the Festival itself. Visitors staying at Kfar Blum are given the chance to meet the artists informally, discuss the pieces played and even participate in nightly "classical jam sessions", in which they can join the professionals in sight-reading musical scores.
During the pre-festival week, the musicians rehearse intensively and fuse into ad hoc ensembles. Rehearsals, open to the public, take place in the four new spacious studios on the kibbutz (each with a seating capacity of 100) as well as the auditorium of its Clore Center of Music and Dance (capacity 200), which during the year caters to students of dance and music from kibbutzim and villages in the region.
The second week is devoted to more than a dozen concerts with three or four performances daily, from familiar compositions to new, experimental pieces, all of which are broadcast live on the "Voice of Music" radio station.
This year, the Festival took place from July 22-29. The pre-opening concert, aimed at all age groups, was titled "Birds in Music", and featured music from the Middle Ages to the 20th century which imitates birds' song and, claimed the festival brochure, "even competes with it." Among the pieces performed were Couperin's "The Nightingale in Love", Hoffmeister's "The Hen, the Cuckoo and the Donkey", and a sonata by Vaughan Williams, "In Imitation of Birds".
The Festival's menu - including classical and modern music, songs and dances - was rich and varied, as were the locations of the performances. One piece of contemporary music was played by six percussionists at the Ramat Hagolan Wineries in the nearby town of Katzrin. Another concert outside the kibbutz was performed in the courtyard
of a factory in the town of Rosh Pina, by a group calling itself "The Jazz Beatles".
Most of the concerts in the annual festival are played by local artists, but some of the musicians come from abroad; this year from Belgium, England and the United States. In addition to the instrumentalists, six singers offered Bach cantatas and songs by Ravel and Debussy, the Upper Galilee Choir supplied choral music, and five dancers from
the Clore Center for Music and Dance added their talent to the wide-ranging program.
There were also several premieres, among them songs from "In Heaven", a play about the Crusaders written by Yacov Shabtai. The songs were composed by Shlomo Gronich, founder of the Sheba Choir of Ethiopian immigrant youngsters, and were accompanied by a recorder quartet and a piano. Other premieres included "Anna Through the Looking Glass" for percussion, string quartet and a dancer by Menachem Wiesenberg; Sonata in C major "Hommage a Joseph Haydn" for three recorders by Yechezkel Braun; and a string sextet by Menachem Zur.