By Anne Marie Allocca
The couple, who have lived in Valley Stream since 1999, run Court Street Music, where students study piano, voice and composition. The couple held their fourth annual recital on June 17. It's been a busy month for them, performing in Boston, preparing for the recital, and recently making their debut in Israel, with concerts in Haifa and Tel Aviv.
Lehrman, a member of the Guild of Temple Musicians, a sister organization to the American Conference of Cantors, has attended many of the conferences. Next year, he will co-chair the concerts during the conference, which will be held in the Catskills. However, this year the Guild of Temple Musicians conference was held for the first time in Israel.
"In every conference I have attended, they've welcomed their members to perform and have their own works performed," he said. "This is the first time they are not inviting composers to present their own works. Helene will be singing in one concert and I'll be accompanying in another during the convention."
They were most excited about holding their own concerts, one the day before the conference started, on June 24, and the other the day after the conference ended, on July 1, in Tel Aviv. It was Lehrman's connections with many music libraries around the world that helped make the Israeli concerts a reality. Lehrman holds a doctorate in music and a master's in library, so he has many contacts with music libraries, one being the Felicja Blumental Music Center in Tel Aviv. "It's a library and an auditorium which gives three to five concerts a week all year," he said before the concert. "And I just learned that the former mayor of Tel Aviv, under whose mayoralty that auditorium was built, will also be in attendance at the concert." Lehrman smiles, adding, "He happens to be married to my mother's third cousin. His name is Shlomo Lahat and he is a very important figure in Israeli history. He was onstage with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when Rabin was killed [in 1995]. The song they were singing is going to be on our program, Shir L'Shalom, the song of peace. I translated that song from Hebrew to English."
During the concerts, Lehrman and Williams performed in English, Hebrew, Yiddish and also Ladino, a Judeo Spanish. Another special part of the concerts was the performance of Jenny Kiss'd Me, a poem by Leigh Hunt that was set to music by Lehrman and also composer Max Stern. Lehrman points out several coincidences between the two men. "Max Stern and I each decided to set the poem to music when we were each the same age, 29. He was about to leave for Israel and I was on tour with the Metropolitan Opera and I didn't know what was going to happen after that. We were both sort of at sea, not knowing what to expect of the future." And Williams just happened to have the sheet music to Stern's composition in her collection. Even more astounding to Lehrman was the discovery that Stern had been born in Valley Stream.
Lehrman contacted Stern and invited him to the concerts. Stern, who now writes for the Jerusalem Post, didn't review the concerts since his work was performed, but he did attend. Stern was raised on Arkansas Drive to parents Irving and Rachel, and attended Howell Road, Memorial and Central High. He began studying music at Memorial. "My teachers were Theodore Mordoff and Dewey Riemersma. I participated in the band, orchestra and chorus until graduation. Bob Pratt, a former district music director, went with me to the NY State All-State Orchestra," said Stern, whose parents came to Valley Stream during WWI when the village was just a farm town. His father ran a hosiery store on Rockaway Avenue until he passed away in 1980. Stern visited New York in May when a showcase performance of his opera, Messer Marco Polo, was performed at the New York City Opera. As he walked onstage prior to the performance, he was greeted by cheers from a group in the audience. "Who were they?" he asked himself. "I walked toward them. 'Hi, I'm Ellen Tuminnelli, I'm Larry Wittlen, I'm Ellen Block, Joyce Goldstein, Eric Casdan,' these were the kids from my class. Eve Siderov, now Feldman, and a successful children's book author, had brought them together to give me a surprise visit. And a surprise it was," said Stern.
As for his interpretation of Jenny Kiss'd Me, Stern notes the poem was once the one he read in fifth grade with his teacher. "A dozen years later after my studies at the Eastman School of Music, I was working as a freelance double bass player with the Springfield Symphony in Massachusetts and set Jenny Kiss'd Me with a poem by Langston Hughes to make a small song cycle," said Stern. "It was performed in New York City soon afterwards by Elaine Shapiro, America's first woman cantor and me at a private party. I later recorded it. Leonard's wife somehow came across the music in the late 1970s."
Although he has lived in Israel since 1976, Stern fondly recalls Valley Stream as "a beautiful, quiet place. I left for college and returned only to visit. Whenever I do, I see that this is where my personality, ideas and ideals were first formed and molded."
Lehrman was looking forward to meeting Stern as well as seeing his cousin Lahat, while Williams shares what she was eager to do in Israel, "singing the three Hebrew songs that I'm singing to people who will understand them."
The Haifa concert was held at the home of Moshe Ron, the head of the piano faculty at the Haifa Conservatory. Ron is the cousin of Marc Bliztstein, an American composer who greatly influenced Lehrman's life. "He died in 1964 and I finished about 20 of his works," said Lehrman. "The work that he was most obsessed with for most of his life was called Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian anarchist immigrants who were convicted and executed for a crime they didn't commit. I finished that work as well. The middle section of the concert [was] music by Marc Blitzstein. Ron [invited] his family and friends and Max Stern [was] there, too."
So after performing in Israel what's on Lehrman's concert wish list? Would you believe that he's performed at most libraries on Long Island, but never performed in Valley Stream at the Waldinger Library? "We really would like to share what we have with the rest of the community," Lehrman said.
