{"id":28939,"date":"2014-03-16T00:32:38","date_gmt":"2014-03-16T07:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=28939"},"modified":"2014-03-23T06:23:32","modified_gmt":"2014-03-23T13:23:32","slug":"when-words-become-music-and-music-becomes-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/?p=28939","title":{"rendered":"When Words Become Music, and Music becomes Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harvey Bordowitz wants to talk about music. And if we\u2019re smart, we\u2019ll listen.<\/p>\n

\"Bracha<\/a>
Bracha Kol, Harvey Bordowitz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Who is Harvey Bordowitz? As founder, developer, and conductor of the world-renowned Herzliya Chamber Orchestra, Bordowitz has been a primal force in Israel\u2019s cultural world for more than 30 years. A native of Brooklyn, where he spent the first 29 years of his music-driven life, Bordowitz came to Israel as a tourist in 1971, fell madly in love with his beautiful Israeli tour guide, and made aliyah to Israel the following year. He also married the tour guide.<\/p>\n

As Bordowitz explained it to me when I first met him years ago, \u201cI had a Master\u2019s degree in music from Brooklyn College, concentrating in conducting, opera and musicology. Once I knew I would be making aliyah\u2014with the ink literally wet on my diploma\u2014I had this strange notion that maybe I could start a traveling opera company here in Israel, which would wander from kibbutz to moshav, from town to village, performing opera on a shoestring budget. But as it happened, after half a year of searching for work, I was hired by the city of Herzliya to be their music coordinator. And once I had settled in, I created an orchestra.\u201d<\/p>\n

Founded in 1977, the orchestra remained strictly amateur while gradually acquiring an ever-growing audience and a good word-of-mouth reputation. After four years of this, Bordowitz went to the head of Herzliya\u2019s cultural department in 1981 and told him it was time to go professional. \u201cHad he been sane, he would have told me I was crazy. But he was a man of great vision and culture and just said okay, let\u2019s see how we can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus began the Herzliya Chamber Orchestra, which, like Topsy in Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin, \u2018just grew and grew\u2019 into a full 55-member symphony orchestra, delighting audiences in Herzliya, throughout the State of Israel, at venues overseas, and in recordings. In addition, Bordowitz soon found himself in demand as a guest conductor, leading philharmonic orchestras in such places as Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, England and Wales.<\/p>\n

A unique and unvarying feature of Bordowitz\u2019 performances with the HCO was the famous half-hour pre-concert lecture to the audience, in both Hebrew and English. Believing that \u201ca conductor is first-of-all a teacher,\u201d Bordowitz both spoke to and interacted with the audience to introduce the evening\u2019s program and enrich their experience of the performance.<\/p>\n

With the orchestra currently in hiatus, its conductor has taken his show on the road, so to speak, with an ongoing series of lecture\/performances, similar to those he gave before his concerts in Herzliya. His next show is a combined concert and lecture called \u201cWhen Music Becomes Words,\u201d featuring performances by Miss Bracha Kol, one of Israel\u2019s foremost mezzo-sopranos, singing music by Schubert, Schumann, Mahler, Gershwin, and Rogers & Hammerstein, accompanied by pianist Victor Stanislavsky. Bordowitz will lend his insights and expertise to these performances, in his usual amusing and engaging way: enlightening, but never intimidating; informative, but never\u2014God forbid\u2014boring.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Music Becomes Words\u201d will happen on Sunday, March 23 at 19:30 pm at Bet Israel Concert Hall, 19 Yehuda Hanassi, Netanya. For reservations, call Netanya AACI at 09-833-0950, or email boxoffice@netanyaaaci.org.il.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harvey Bordowitz wants to talk about music. And if we\u2019re smart, we\u2019ll listen. Who is Harvey Bordowitz? As founder, developer, and conductor of the world-renowned Herzliya Chamber Orchestra, Bordowitz has been a primal force in Israel\u2019s cultural world for more than 30 years. A native of Brooklyn, where he spent the first 29 years of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}