Making musical ends meet, the annual Jerusalem East and West Festival shows the way

Tom Cohen is trying to make some sense of it all for everyone concerned: the senseless violence, the trauma, the politically driven rifts. That, sadly, covers much of the national experience in these here parts in recent, and longer stretching, times.

Cohen’s way of injecting some humanity, some semblance of spiritual health and mutual acceptance and respect, not to mention soul-enriching and life-affirming beauty, is to generate musical interfaces that marry sounds from seemingly disparate cultural climes in the process, accentuate that which connects us, rather than divides us.

In a nutshell, that is the complete opposite of the thinking in political realms and one which offers not only respite from the anxiety of daily life here, but it also opens the heart and mind to the possibility of a better life for us all.

There are big guns – strictly of the musical ilk – right across the lineup.

THE FIRST evening features top eastern-leaning acts The Revivo Project, veteran songstress Margalit Tzanaani together with the female troupe of the Hebrews from Dimona, and young stellar singer-songwriter Sasson Shaulov.

I put it to Cohen that the very fact that the festival is now going ahead must be, at the very least, particularly gratifying, and the event is all the more significant.

I was surprised by the somewhat ambivalent response I got.

“In truth, I have mixed feelings,” he noted. “On the one hand, of course, with the end of the Iranian chapter of the saga in which we are living, there is a great sense of relief. But, on the other hand, we are talking in terms of getting back to ‘normal,’ and celebrating that, but ‘the routine’ is a war in Gaza and the ongoing captivity of our hostages there. So it is difficult to bring our role into all this.”

Conflicting sentiments notwithstanding, Cohen is offering us musical fare of the highest quality performed by top-notch solo artists supported by a seasoned ensemble with Jewish, Muslim, and Christian musicians playing instruments from diverse cultural hinterlands.

That, he posits, is a perfectly natural state of affairs, and not just a fanciful notion thought up by some well-meaning yet naive artists.

“I don’t want to come across as excessively pompous, but I have lived in places where the different [cultural] identities not only live together, they enrich each other. That experience led me to want to create that. The fact that I have different identities within myself did not lead to a clash, rather the exact opposite.”

As the grandson of olim from Iraq and Poland, that clarity is part and parcel of Cohen’s DNA, bolstered by spending his earliest formative years in the multicultural melting pot of Beersheva. That eventually fed into Cohen’s way of thinking, as an adult, and informed his artistic mindset. “In many ways, this festival is a continuation of that. It is a proposal of life, of a way of life, which could take place here.” The use of the latter home patch marker, naturally, refers to Cohen’s country of birth rather than his adopted West European abode.

The conversation drifts seamlessly into philosophical climes. “[Egyptian-born Israeli writer] Jacqueline Kahanoff talked about the Levant, which reflects the multiplicity of identities that exists within us,” Cohen says.

He notes, however, that the answer to our regional issues does not lie solely in convening to play and listen to music.

“There is also the complexity. We can live in conflict with our neighbors, but if the reality changes and the conflict is pushed to one side, perhaps then we might recall that we share music we love and food we like a lot, and many things in the culture that are similar and can enrich us.”

That, to my musical ears, keen taste buds, and hopeful mind, sounds perfectly reasonable and eminently doable. Despite his boundless optimism and unrelenting positivism, Cohen weighs his words with care as he lays out the simplicity and fundamental rewarding practicability of his way of thinking and hands-on working and living.

“At the end of the day, there is one basic understanding, which is that the scale of musical notes – do re mi fa sol la si do – is not man-made. No one invented it. It is a gift we received from what [17th-century Jewish Dutch philosopher Baruch] Spinoza termed ‘the immortal and infinite being’ which we call Nature or God.”

The orchestra founder proffers corporal evidence for that take on life. “If you take a string and shorten it by half, and you pluck at after doing that before you shortened it, you’ll find the sound has gone up an octave.”

Natural beings around us, Cohen says, bolster that view. “If a bee flaps its wings exactly 440 times a second when it flies past your ear, you’ll hear the musical note la. Everything, basically, derives from that.”

That natural sonic factor informs the orchestra’s work and the synergy between its members with their ostensibly differing cultural baggage.

“It is, he believes, as much about listening as producing sounds. “To achieve a good combination, you have to have to have a good command of the various languages. You have to arrive at a state of affairs whereby the mix – the fusion, if you will – is not a collection of compromises, but rather artistic, as well as professional, understanding. And there are rules of composition, arranging, and execution to abide by.”

That sounds like a measured, considered approach to harmonious living, beyond just the entertaining, quality, and amply rewarding musical bottom line on offer, from a glittering and wide-ranging slew of acts that will take the Sultan’s Pool stage, in the shadow of the Jerusalem Old City walls, later this week.