Star of the Show

T 

hese days, it sometimes feels like concerts, which we took for granted until two months ago, have become history. Thinking about how the industry will hopefully be restarted sooner than later got me reminiscing about the hundreds of Jewish performers who’ve ended up on stage either at Brooklyn College, Jerusalem’s Binyanei Ha’umah, or anywhere in between. While Jewish concerts, from chazzanus to Yiddish folk music, were performed in shuls and theaters from the turn of the 20th century, it was only around 1970 that a different kind of concert became popular — the frum family show.

This new genre began when a fellow named Isaac Gross, who was then the owner of Neginah Orchestra, came up with the idea of doing large shows geared to families in a more professional venue than the local shul social hall — and his first venture was in the early 1970s with Yigal Calek and his London School of Jewish Song.

After indefatigable Yigal Calek, a sixth-grade yeshivah rebbi-turned-composer and choir director, had released two albums — Ma Navu in 1970 (think “Sali Umetzudasi” and “Al Zeh Hayah Daveh Libeinu”), and Borchi Nafshi in 1971 (with the “tzitzis” jacket cover including real strings), his London Pirchim Choir (which had morphed into the London School of Jewish Song) was invited to spend the summer at Rabbi Eli Teitelbaum’s Camp Sdei Chemed in Eretz Yisrael. I was a kid then, and that summer my family also went to Israel, where I tasted my very first concert — “Camp Sdei Chemed Presents the London School of Jewish Song,” whose albums I already knew by heart. I still remember the thrill of it all.

It was at Sdei Chemed that Yigal Calek first met Neginah Orchestra’s Yisroel Lamm, who became his arranger and conductor. That led to the mega-popular collaboration album with Neginah Orchestra containing such still-enduring hits as “Ashira,” “Ko Amar,” “Chamol,” and “Children of Silence.” Besides the great melodies, Yigal again clinched his niche, choosing words that weren’t the run of the mill pesukim, preferring instead to take profound lyrics from such sources as the Yamim Noraim davening. This third album became so popular that it spawned three world tours.