Adam Guettel:  Daybreak

Adam Guettel: Daybreak

“Daybreak” by Adam Guettel from Floyd Collins. I must have listened to this at least 800 times. To my ear, it is a spectacularly sad song, which I love, and Christopher Innvar and Jason Danieley’s performances are heartbreaking.

Jack Gottlieb: Eitz Chayim

Jews liken the oral and written tradition to an ever-living, ever-flourishing source of inspiration. The text of “Eitz Chayim” is always sung when returning the Torah scrolls to the ark, along with a prayer to “renew our days as of old.” The...
Eliyahu Gamliel: Eretz Zavat Chalav

Eliyahu Gamliel: Eretz Zavat Chalav

A vast canon of what Israelis consider to be “folk” songs were actually composed in the last 80 years by real people. Eliyahu Gamliel’s famous setting caught the attention of none other than Nina Simone, who recorded it in 1962 from the piano with...

Basya Schechter: Teshuva

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was one of the 20th century’s most renowned teachers, philosophers – and, as it turns out, poets! Heschel’s early Yiddish poetry inspired the contemporary cantor and performer Basya Schechter to compose Songs of...