Scroll down to read: ‘About Our Concerts’ and ‘About Our Repertoire - Note: All concerts can be customized.
HOLIDAY CONCERTS
(Concerts can be organized to have a holiday focus,and include secular selections as well.)
New! SHABBAT SERVICE
A unique complement to your Synagogue’s existing Shabbat Services organized in collaboration with your Rabbi and Cantor. The repertoire can be integrated into the existing liturgy, or presented as a variation. Part of the collaboration can include teaching these melodies to the congregants.
The repertoire includes many Sephardic versions of the liturgy, Judeo-Spanish wedding songs to welcome the Sabbath Bride, a variety of versions of the Song of Songs from different Sephardic communities, selected zemirot as well as Havdalah melodies.
To discuss this offering for your Synagogue with our Artistic Director, Judith Wachs, please write to: voturtle@aol.com, with the subject heading: “VOT Shabbat” and please include your contact information, or call 617-491-3465, and leave your contact information)
PASSOVER One Kid, One Kid--A Judeo-Spanish Passover
PURIM This Night of Purim: --A
Judeo-Spanish Purim (music only).
Kore Megilla!--The Megillah, the Story of
Purim, is narrated, accompanied by Sephardic musical traditions.
HANUKKAH Ay Candela!--A Judeo-Spanish Hanukkah
CONCERTS FOR ANY TIME
Sephardic Spring Signature
Sephardic musical expressions of love--lost and found--that abound
in all cultures in the season of Spring.
Ladder of Gold A concert
of courtship, love and marriage--featuring wedding traditions.
Second Harvest Ladino Musical Repertoire from the 20th Century.
Life Circles A Judeo-Spanish musical Journey through the life-cycle.
About Our Concerts
The world of Sephardic music encompasses a vast array of songs and stories that reflect the life of the people across boundaries of time and place. The melodies, often a combination of middle-eastern and western scales, represent a bridge between the east and the west. To further enhance the experience for our audiences of all the dimensions of these melodies, Voice of the Turtle concerts have a thematic focus, presenting a ‘slice’ of time and place. This organizing principle helps make unfamiliar repertoire more accessible to people who don’t speak Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), or who are neither familiar with the history nor the culture of this community.
About Our Repertoire
Our concerts present selections from musical traditions preserved, remembered, created, and adapted by the community of Spanish Jews (Sephardim) during more than 500 years of dispersal. We learned most of this repertoire from field recordings, and some directly from people whose Judeo-Spanish (Sephardic) musical heritage came via the Balkans, Turkey, Morocco, Greece, Rhodes, or Jerusalem. These songs are intriguing, delightful, compelling, beautiful, and a remarkable testimonial to the importance and the power of oral tradition.
In addition to the special focus on the theme, all concerts include life-cycle songs, historic reminiscences, romansero, (the ballads which evoke medieval Spain and important Biblical figures), songs of love lost and found, laments, and wedding melodies. In short, our concerts present the stories of a unique community of people who preserved their culture in exile for more than 500 years.