Lainie Fefferman: Here I Am

https://www.wruu.org/broadcasts/50406

— Dave Lake, 4.29.2024

Lainie Fefferman reaches back even further in time for the creation of Here I Am. The 10-part work is a series of pieces based on the Hebrew Bible, ranging from a purely spoken introductory text reading a census of the 12 tribes of Israel to a series of explorations of ways in which the ancient texts are, or are not, meaningful and relevant to contemporary life. Much of this is not exactly music – it is more a series of soundscapes inviting contemplation, such as the very high violin register used to paint a picture of the angels called “Nephilim” and the extended (and also high-register) sound, punctuated by percussion, in which “Deuteronomic Rules” are recited (“you shall not plough with an ox and an ass together,” “you shall not marry your father’s former wife,” and so forth). A steady pulsing underlies “Sword on Thigh,” about a civil war; a vocal trio (sounding a bit like the Muses in the animated Disney version of Hercules) delivers Abraham’s arguments with God about Sodom; and other pieces use different instrumental and vocal effects to put forward still more admonitions and prohibitions. Here I Ameventually concludes with a repeat of the initial census, making it clear that Fefferman is speaking only to those who share her Jewish background and, like her, are trying to understand and make sense of many-thousand-years-old writings whose relevance to modern life is sometimes difficult to fathom, sometimes impossible to comprehend, sometimes decidedly problematic (as with the prohibition, from Leviticus 18:22, against the “abomination” that occurs when any man should “lie with a male as with a woman”). Here I Am sounds like a performance piece – it is easy to imagine the theatricality of the musicians and the reciters of the Biblical passages – and has the effect of listening in on the composer’s own exploration of the basis of her faith and the sometimes difficult-to-fathom elements underlying it. For those who share Fefferman’s beliefs and her concerns about their foundations, this will be a meaningful exploration that offers questions but not definitive conclusions. For those steeped in different religions or committed to none at all, the whole exercise will have little significance or meaningful impact.

— Mark Estren, 5.19.2024

Following the release of her debut album "White Fire," in September 2023, experimental composer Lainie Fefferman found herself finishing another album not even a year later. "Here I Am" is an experimental electronic album that is the culmination of over a decade of the composer's musical and spiritual exploration. It was released in April 2024 on New Focus Recordings.

A(-)religious beginning

In 2009, Lainie Fefferman was in grad school for music composition. Fresh into Barack Obama's first term in office, two intersecting discussions caught Fefferman's attention in the news. Over the previous years, gay marriage had begun to be legalized on the state level, starting in Massachusetts and Connecticut. A debate over its federal legality was becoming a more practical hot-button issue. As well, conspiracy theories surrounding the nominally Christian Obama's supposed Muslim faith as well as a growing popularity of atheism and the increase in religious "nones" provoked many right-wing pundits into putting their faith front and center in public discourse.

These discussions had many right-wing religious pundits arguing against the legalization of gay marriage based on the Old Testament and Levitical religious scripture. Fefferman notes that many of her peers fit into the skeptical atheist trend of the time, but ironically for her, who grew up understanding herself as a secular Jew, spirituality was actually of greater interest. "When I was in high school in college, it would have been easier to tell my friends I'm a Wiccan," said Fefferman, reflecting on the skepticism towards institutional religions at the time.

Despite this, the cynical use of religion by political pundits further provoked Fefferman's sincere interest in the topic.

Here the album is!

Fast forward to 2024 and Fefferman released “Here I Am,“ consisting of 10 different tracks touching on different stories and aspects of the Torah she’d been pondering for years. Fefferman describes the album as having three different aspects of scripture, “three buckets“ as she puts it, that it draws upon. The first "bucket" as Fefferman describes it has to do with the more difficult to stomach aspects of scripture.

"I really thought that I'm gonna try and emphasize the crap out of these stories. I just want to hate it, but I'm gonna try so hard to empathize with every different person in this story. That's Lot's daughters, that's a lot of Leviticus and also the Binding of Isaac. Even Moses' civil war that killed 1000s of Jews. You know, I'm gonna try real hard to think what I would do if I were this person. How do I empathize with this?" — Lainie Fefferman

The first more visceral bucket gives way to a second bucket of stories Fefferman is more unabashedly enamored by. She mentions Abraham's bargain with God on behalf of the citizens of Sodom.

"The impudence of Abraham bargaining with God. To tell God 'you're amazing, you know, better than me, for real, but 40 really is the same as 30, right?' I really think of chutzpah; like that is the origin story of chutzpah. I don't know if it's the combination of impudence and righteousness, but also the pragmatism and wileyness. I feel like that's my Judaism, like it's not taking up the sword and battling the enemies." — Lainie Fefferman

The final bucket for Fefferman is more unexpected. It includes much of the Book of Numbers and Leviticus and the dry way much of them list sacrificial processes and censuses of able-bodied men. For Fefferman, however, there is real emotional power in the fact that people cared enough to record these things. Pivoting to the music, it reminds her of one of her greatest musical inspirations.

"It's important, but it's also sort of like sorbet. This has been the tradition of Bang on a Can list pieces. like 'Lost Objects' or 'Carbon Copy Building.' We're just gonna make a song out of a list. There's power in the sense of motion and repetitiveness, but ultimately, it's still not quite sorbet, but it gives you a bit of a rest to just enjoy the poetry and the repetition." — Lainie Fefferman

Music to be to

Stylistically the music is varied, going off in a number of different directions in service of these different stories Fefferman was evoking. There are bluesy sections, melismatic choral notes, minimalist inspirations and more. Fefferman excitedly recounted the list of wonderful collaborators whose varied skills and backgrounds helped to inspire and form the album into what it would become. This included the new music ensemble TRANSIT and a number of vocalists — Martha Cluver, Melissa Hughes, Caroline Shaw, Charlotte Mundy and Meaghan Burke.

"Here I Am", much like any worth-its-while religious text, blurs the lines between the beautiful, the ethereal, the harsh and the confusing, yet somehow makes it through with a cohesive experience that knows what is — that it's there. "It's not easy listening…it's tricky," Fefferman notes. Tricky or not, her album is an astounding midrash for these core texts in the Jewish community, giving a fresh sonic interpretation on Judaism from an unlikely student of religion.

— Miru Villerius, 5.29.2024

The Old Testament, more properly called the Hebrew Bible outside the Christian tradition, lags far behind the New Testament in classical music, although inroads were made with the rise of modern Jewish composers in the twentieth century. Before Bloch, Copland, Ben-Haim, Bernstein, et al., settings of Hebrew biblical texts were rare, but various well-known stories are represented in operas and oratorios by Handel (well known applies to his pious audiences), including Messiah, and in Mendelssohn’s Elijah. In Judaism there are religious rituals like Kaddish for the dead that composers can use, but even then, modern Jewish composers are faced with finding a suitable musical idiom for scripture, a challenge confronted here by New York-born Lainie Fefferman. Her self-description on her website declares, “I'm a music maker, advocate, and teacher. I’m a Jew and a lover of mathematics.”

Fefferman’s identity is intimately entwined in the single work on the program. As New Focus succinctly describes it, “Here I Am is the culmination of a fifteen-year creative journey engaging and grappling with the ancient texts of the Hebrew Bible and writing music in response to her immersive process.” From this description one might expect an ultra-Orthodox work based either on cantorial singing or traditional Jewish folk roots. Folk songs and dances from Russia and the Pale of Settlement inspired the original movement for autonomous Jewish music in czarist Russia around 1900, which continued when the thrust of the movement moved to Israel. But evolution occurred in other directions, and today’s Israeli composers have gone much more international and eclectic.

Eclectic is the key word for Here I Am. It is “structured loosely in the form of an oratorio and scored for a group of solo and ensemble female voices, accompanied by a kind of chamber rock band.” In its most populist passages, we hear something akin to Godspell or Bernstein’s Mass. This is part of a stylistic mélange that extends to contemporary gestures from the New Music playbook. Fefferman opens the work before the music starts by reciting from Numbers 1, “As the Lord commanded Moses, so did He number them in the wilderness of Sinia.” The work’s seven movements set texts from Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, all presented in English, with some interspersed Hebrew (I think—these passages are very indistinct). The guiding principle, as the composer puts it, is that “I decided to make a piece that tours all of the emotional places the Torah sends me.”

It was a misstep not to include the biblical texts; we get only the references to chapter and verse. Although the spoken narration, parlando, and singing are generally clear, there are often times, as in the movement titled “Nephelim,” where the words are mumbled in an indecipherable undertone. The same holds for the enhanced overdubbed voices chanting in Offerings. When Fefferman describes herself as an advocate, I think that’s carried out in this piece by trying to find a living relationship with ancient religious texts—music is certainly a major step in that direction.

But she also recognizes that the Hebrew Bible is problematic for modern people struggling to believe. For example, Deuteronomy Rules brings up the injunction not to plow with oxen and ass together or to wear cloth combining linen and wool. There is no editorial comment on such anachronisms from centuries BCE; they are presented in the spirit of “Let’s look at this squarely and contemplate our response.” I admit to finding no consistent theme in these texts, which depict ancient Jewish life through snapshots of offerings, injunctions, laws, and direct communication from God. The latter is conveyed in a “nice big reverb,” as the composer puts it in her chatty notes, a sound inspired by large clay pots used to expand the acoustic of a hidden synagogue that Fefferman visited in Portugal.

The five female singers are quite attractive performers either in ensembles or as soloists, and the instrumental part by TRANSIT New Music is expertly done. The instrumentation combines acoustic instruments (strings, clarinet, piano, percussion) with overdubs and unspecified electronic techniques. If you are in the mood, Fefferman’s use of open breath sounds and ghostly vocals evokes an ancient desert culture.

There is sincerity in the intention behind Here I Am and an appealing variety of eminently accessible musical styles. I’m not sure I hear musical depth or profound involvement for the listener beneath the surface. This heartfelt piece speaks for itself with immediacy, which becomes its primary attraction.

Four stars: Biblical texts set in an appealing, accessible style

— Huntley Dent, 7.24.2024

Who do you report to when you wake up in the morning? We have had anywhere between two thousand and seven thousand or so years to think about it.

Lainie Fefferman, the composer of this deeply meditative big ensemble piece didn’t always punch in the “right name” when she woke up until the political climate in the USA (and far and wide) began to take its toll on her state of mind. Her short introduction describes the rude awakening of American Jews.

There are six people in ancient scripture who uttered the words: “Here I Am (Lord).” The patriarchs Abraham and Jacob, the prophets Moses, Samuel, Isaih and Ananias, who was called to minister to Saul. However, Fefferman has expertly woven the miniatures that make up Here I Am with episodes from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The cantors, led by Fefferman, nestle cheek-by-jowl with an accomplished improvising septet and the powerful neo-psalmody of a vocal trio to tell the story.

The words, “Here I Am” are pivotal to that story, and the unification of the tribes of Israel. This is Fefferman’s operatic “Here I am Lord.” A story of faith, expertly told from the brimstone and fire of Lot’s Daughters, And their Bloodguilt Shall Be Upon Them to the ultimate test of that faith in the story of Abrahan and Issac in Take Thy Son.

— Raul da Gama, 9.03.2024