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"Menorah: Songs from a Jewish Life" is Shelley's 2nd Jewish solo CD - benefit concert for Florence Melton School and Creative Connections programs at Soloway Jewish Community Centre CDs will be on sale for $20.00, all inclusive. Ottawa singer Shelley Posen, known to folk audiences across North America and Great Britain as a member of the trio Finest Kind, launches his new solo CD, Menorah: Songs from a Jewish Life, on Monday, June 11, at the Library and Archives Canada Auditorium. For decades, Ottawa singer and folklorist Shelley Posen has performed traditional songs about people's lives in many communities: Ottawa Valley lumbermen, Newfoundland fishermen, and English sailors. Now he is writing and singing about his own. Shelley's approach to Jewish music is unlike anything recorded or performed today. As a songwriter whose idols include Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Noel Coward, and W.S. Gilbert, he writes elegant, witty, and sophisticated songs about Jewish experience. And while Shelley has recorded some songs with a klezmer sound and feel, his writing styles are as varied as one might expect from someone who grew up in Toronto during the golden age of do-wop and rock-and-roll, the end of old Broadway, the beginning of the folksong revival, and the Calypso craze. Echoes of all these influences are to be heard on "Menorah". Shelley's songs have a genuineness rooted in experience - of Jewish food, festivals, and family life. He sings what he knows, lightly bandying Talmudic Midrash and biblical references while rhyming in three languages (mostly English sprinkled with Hebrew and Yiddish - one song even uses Aramaic, but only in a line or two). His songs can be laugh-out-loud funny, about Jews and Chinese food, or achingly poignant about personal family loss; there are silly kibitzes in rhyme, and a powerful, pull-no-punches meditation on modern Jewish life. Menorah: Songs from a Jewish Life is Shelley's second Jewish solo CD. His first, Manna (2003), has been called a classic (Robert Resnick, Vermont Public Radio), with songs that are the funniest I have heard since Tom Lehrer (Philadelphia Folksong Society), and that penetrate the heart (Canadian Jewish News). Accompanying Shelley on June 11 will be Sol Gunner and The Menorah Band. The concert is a benefit for the Florence Melton School and Creative Connections programs at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre. The CD is on sale at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre, Compact Music, the Ottawa Folklore Centre, and at Shelley's website. For more information, contact Maxine Miska, Director of Programming, Soloway Jewish Community Centre at 613-798-9818, ext. 263. | |||||
| Price: | $18.00 | ||||
