Music has been more present in our lives since October 7 and has become one of the creative tools in healing our wounded souls.
The Jerusalem East and West Orchestra and Maestro Tom Cohen also chose to express what they are going through in sound, and created a conceptual EP featuring Ninet Taib, Lior Almalich, Naama Tov, Yagel Harush and the Eshkol Regional Council Children's Choir.
The album - arranged, directed and conducted by Cohen - is called "At the End of the Rain Will Come Spring", and includes four tracks, each a story in itself, but also part of a larger story. The project consists of original footage and cover versions in a new adaptation by Cohen, and the four clips were filmed in the new building of the National Library, co-directed by Maor Zagori and Miri Lazar.
"After three months in which the orchestra performs for evacuees, with more than 80 performances all over the country from north to south, we felt that we also needed to touch on art, which can express all kinds of personal but also general emotions during this period – destruction, disaster, longing, hope," explains Cohen. "We tried to portray this in the album for the entire Israeli society, which finds itself in a whirlwind of emotions that are difficult to process.
Ninet Taib, Photo: None
"It was important for us to all be together after a period of detachment. I and the orchestra players are used to being together, and I, Miri and Maor, who are all good friends and work together on Zagori Empire, missed and felt we needed this place, like a support group that embraces itself."
Why did you choose these works and artists?
"My partner, the artistic director alongside me Saar Gamzu, told me a month after the war that I had to do the only thing I knew: music. We started imagining the project, we looked for a lot of songs that would fit, and the song 'Let them come home,' for example, is best suited to cry out about the abductees, who must return."
Are there any plans to return with the orchestra to the halls?
"Next week we will embark on a concert tour all over the country, 'Sarit Hadad sings Zohar Argov.' There is something appropriate now about this series with the classics that everyone can sing with Sarit."
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