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Broadway bound?

Shlock Rocker composes Daniel musical

 
 
 

Lenny Solomon hopes the road from Babylon to Broadway runs through Haworth, New Jersey.

It already has passed through Phoenix, Arizona.

That’s where Solomon, whose band, Shlock Rock, has been a fixture on the Orthodox music scene for more than 25 years, was urged by a rabbi at a Jewish day school hosting him for a concert to look at the Book of Daniel, which the rabbi had just taught to his class.

Solomon, who now lives in Bet Shemesh, Israel, but grew up in Queens, took the suggestion seriously.

image
Lenny Solomon at the piano.

“I said, ‘Oh my God, this will translate to theater.’ I got taken in by the story. It enveloped me.

“I wrote the whole musical ‘Daniel in Babylon — A New Musical’ in a month. I sat down at the piano and every day another song would come in, or an idea that I would develop. I couldn’t get over it. It was as if God was handing me a full length musical on a platter. It was like receiving musical prophecy. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written.”

By the end of May, 26 songs had been completed. As in “Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat,” virtually every line is sung.

Solomon already had dipped his toes into the world of the Broadway musical. He has released several albums of parodies; two of them parody Broadway, featuring songs like “Get Me to the Shul on Time” and “There’s No Business Like Shul Business.” Other albums feature original compositions. All told, his 34 albums have sold nearly 200,000 copies.

If all goes according to plan, the album for “Daniel in Babylon — A New Musical” will not feature Solomon on guitar and lead vocals.

“I’m not going to be performing it. I’m not acting in this. I’m the writer. Nobody should get the idea that they’re going to see Lenny as Daniel,” he said.

Instead, he is raising money on the Kickstarter.com web site to recruit an orchestra and singers to record the soundtrack. If he raises the $36,000 he is seeking, recording sessions will take place at his favorite recording studio, in Haworth, in October.

For a $10 pledge on his Kickstarter.com site, donors will receive 10 songs from the musical; $18 gets a complete soundtrack. Larger donations receive increasingly more lavish rewards; for $5,000, Solomon will provide a private concert in your living room.

YouTube videos featuring Solomon perform demos of some songs on the piano can be found on his Kickstarter page at http://kck.st/Q34DUZ.

 
 

Meet Rita

It has been a high profile month for Rita Jahanforuz, the singer who often has been called the Israeli Madonna.

Last week, she blew a kiss to President Barack Obama while singing at a state dinner honoring him hosted by Israeli President Shimon Peres.

Two weeks earlier, she performed a concert at the United Nations General Assembly Hall — not normally a venue featuring bands, singers, strobe lights, and smoke machines, let alone Hebrew songs — where she was introduced by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.

“It feels really amazing,” said Rita, who always records and performs using just her first name, about being Israel’s informal cultural ambassador, in a telephone interview with the Jewish Standard.

 

A colorful life

The year was 1965. Marc Rubinstein was a 15-year-old kid in Long Beach on Long Island with a guitar and love for rock and roll and a talent for electrical wiring.

He had a band, but getting good lighting on stage was hit and miss in those days.

“When you went into a concert, they had a couple of strip lights on stage. A lot of the time they didn’t even turn the house lights down because they said rowdy kids didn’t deserve darkness,” he recalled this week.

 

The Megile of Itzik Manger

The Folksbiene: National Yiddish Theater has hit a home run with its new production of “The Megile of Itzik Manger.”

Credit has to go to an inspired production design team (set and costume designer Jenny Romaine, lighting designer Natalie Robin, production stage manager Alex Brouwer) and terrific direction by Moti Didner, the Folksbiene’s associate artistic director. They have reimagined the classic Purimspiel as a small-town circus musical, filled with acrobatics, masks, puppets large and small, sideshow sets, whirling dance numbers, double entendres, proletarian politics, and a variety of other elements that keep the ear and eye delighted throughout.

 

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