Barmaljova in Jerusalem

“This Year in Jerusalem!”

After years of scuttled plans we took our kids to Israel for a week to explore its rich history, its many intertwining cultures, to visit the family of my cousin Natasha and the grave of my grandmother, Ada. We were also grateful to play a house concert in Jerusalem and a special show at Yung Yiddish in Tel Aviv with our friends Ensemble NiHZ, featuring a special appearance by my cousin Natasha, with whom I had a chance to play together for the first time in my life.

Grateful to all of our friends who were able to join us, to everyone we were able to see.

We hope to return again soon!

Below are some excerpts from our performance at Yung Yiddish — and the photos here are from the wonderful work of Victor List / @muperphoto

My cousin Natasha Sher and I have never played together before this moment — over 35 years ago, my family moved from Moscow to New York, and my uncle Yuri’s family moved from Moscow to Tel Aviv, where he won the job of Principal Violist of the Israel Philharmonic. Today, Natasha is one of the busiest violinists in Israel, as the concertmaster of the Israel Camerata Jerusalem and chamber musician. Over these years, we’ve seen each other very infrequently — not by design..

Here’s a snippet of Fritz Kreisler’s “Liebesleid” (Love’s Sorrow) — performed by us impromptu-style, without rehearsal..

Here’s another video snippet from our performance, from the popular yiddish song “Di Sapozhkelekh”, featuring another first — a double family duo — Inna and I met the duo of Bobby Rootveld and Sanna Van Elst at a spa in Taiwan (!) nearly a decade ago, where both of our families were on tour. We kept in touch and played together for the first time at this performance.

I wrote the tune “Ori’s Fearful Symmetry” in 2005, in Ithaca NY, on the set of a film which ended up having no music — sometimes silence is the best soundtrack — but the composition has lived on in many concert performances. Duo NiHZ have had this piece in their repertoire for a decade, and it was a pleasure to sit in with them for this Israeli premiere.

In the final video snippet from our performance, here’s a little bit of the American song “I am a Pilgrim”, with Inna on guitar and vocals and myself on fadolín, that we played as an encore.