Shofar Blues

Click here to listen to a wonderful piece of spoken art/poetry by a young person questioning what it means to be a Jew. 

  I let out nine short piercing trumpet-like cries at my first breath of air.  
  I was pushed out of my mother's womb as the shofar was being blown.

"Melissa Goldman is 17 years old and attends Niles West High School. This piece was recorded as part of the 2008 collection of Louder Than a Bomb Teen Poetry Festival and Competition studio recordings, presented by Chicago Public Radio. The station invited competition finalists from this nationally-renowned teen poetry slam in-studio to record their work. Louder Than a Bomb is hosted by Young Chicago Authors; for more information about the competition visit: http://www.youngchicagoauthors.org/."

Shofar and Musical Intervals

The "Proclamation Style" in Hebrew
by Szabolcsi Bence
Yuval Studies of The Jewish Music Research Centre
The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1968

Abstract: "The fourth and fifth melodic interval appear to be characteristic of the group of ancient Ashkenazic melodies examined. These intervals create tetratonic, pentatonic and tritonic patterns which are almost always "Proclamationary " in style. The group of melodies represents an ancient musical style. Because of the similarity to the benediction style, this groups of melodies can be termed "benediction group". This melody type appears in the Torah cantillation benedictions, the Haftra benedictions etc. The musical style of the melody group appears to be related to motives from the Shofar blowing. The musical examples appended are from the Ashkenazic tradition of South- Eastern Europe, and it is not known whether they are prevalent in other Jewish musical traditions. Although previously narrow melodic ranges were considered characteristic of the ancient musical style, this group of melodies which have a large melodic range can also be considered ancient and can be attributed to ancient agricultural cultures. These melodies can be seen as a sample of an early historic period in Judaism."

http://www.jewish-music.huji.ac.il/thesaurus.asp?page=&id=733&cat=1&advText1=&theyear=&in=1&advType3=Choose&act=view&advRadio1=AND&advRadio2=AND&advRadio3=AND&category=&string=shofar&a_string=OR&advType2=Choose&type_of_rec=&media=&theyear_from=&theyear_to=&advType1=Choose&advText3=&advText2=

Exorcism in the News

Shofar is a spiritual "technology" that can be employed for exorcisms as well as for the Jewish New Year and other celebrations.

The Jerusalem Post recently ran an article entitled, "Do Jews Believe in Exorcisms?" Their answer, "It depends who you ask."

The article cites a recently discovered text from the Cairo Genizah that is the earliest known written report of an exorcising a dybbuk. And it refers to kabbalists in Israel who believe that, "Basically, the dybbuk is encouraged to leave the body of the person it has entered. The dybbuk is in actuality a lost soul who did not merit going to the Garden of Eden but also did not deserve going to Gehinom. He remains in limbo and at some point enters the body of a person," With prayers and shofar blowing, the dybbuk can be encouraged to leave the body.

In an amazing combination of an old technology with the new, the article refers to 
Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri said that exorcisms can even be performed via the internet.  "In fact, a video on the haredi Internet site Ladaat shows [Rabbi David Batzri, head of Yeshivat Hashalom,] performing the removal of a dybbuk to a man in America via Internet..."

I would love to see this video; if you know where it can be found, please add it to the comments to this post.

My New Shofar

I received the following from a friend, describing what shofar means to him and how his experience crafting a shofar enriched his relationship with the horn. 

Today when I breathed in the dust and smoke of the freshly bored out oryx horn, my shofar and I were bonded to each other for eternity. I had come to the task of making my own shofar with a mixture of awe and fear and wonder. Awe in handling the gift that a beautiful and powerful animal had left behind, fear that I would not be worthy of the task, and wonder at the turns of fate that had brought me to this task.

While I was not a complete stranger to the ways of shofar, neither was I anything approaching an expert or even anything more than a curious wonderer of the deeper teachings of shofar. As a boy, I had been reasonably impressed by the shofar blowers at High Holiday services, in particular when they hit an especially long, and clear, Tekiah gedolah. I recall blowing a shofar in Hebrew school, discovering that my school band training on the trombone did not help much when it came to coaxing a call from the tiny mouthpiece of the shofar.

My first kaballah teacher had taught me that the calls of the shofar represented a shattering of the Soul during the days of awe, in order to allow the Soul to then be reconfigured in a fresh, new way. For many years hence I imagined this soul shattering every Rosh Hashanah, getting just a slight sense of the power of this instrument. Shofar as a symbol of clarity of speech and communication was more real and present for me. I had purchased a shofar in a Jewish bookstore, following a feeling that I simply needed to have one. For a number of years I had brought the shofar to the desert each spring, where the community of friends with whom I shared Pesach would gather, and used it as a Talking Piece within our community Talking Circles. When you held the shofar, you spoke from the heart in ways you simply did not in daily life. And when others held the shofar, you listened deeply to their words of truth.

It was in such a circle that my most profound previous experience with shofar had occurred. A young boy of our Passover group, perhaps 11 or 12 years old, not yet bar mitzvahed, held the shofar and spoke of the loss of his father to a tragic accident in the past year since we had last seen him. He spoke movingly with words of clarity and wisdom well beyond his youth, moving me and others to a level of respect for him and his struggle in this very difficult portion of his life journey. At the end of the weekend, I asked him to join me in the center of the closing circle, where I presented him with the shofar, acknowledging the clarity and strength of his speech, and the strong leader and communicator within him that we had all been privileged to see that weekend. He became the keeper of that shofar. For several years since he has returned each year to our Passover gathering, bringing the shofar with him, blowing it to gather us together as a community, and passing it among us to allow us to speak from our truest selves.

At a recent gathering, I experienced the depth of the shofar as an implement of healing in a way I never had before. In a circle of friends, each having spoken of a deeply desired change or an outgrown, no longer needed characteristic we wished to be rid of, the shofar was passed around the circle. Each of us breathed our prayer or desire into the wide end of the horn. Once all had added their prayer into the horn, the shofar was then sounded, strongly, clearly. Tekiah! Attention! Teruah!! Listen all you 3 parts of the soul, change is coming! Shevarim! Shatter, all of you, all parts, all the old patterns broken apart like pieces of a jigsaw, like a pointalist painting! Tekiah Gedolah! As the blast sounded and carried, on and on, I could feel the shattered parts of myself reconstitiuting, regathering, realigning my being again, all 3 aspects of my soul – Nefesh – Ruach – Ne’shamah – coming back together again as One, but not the same as before. I experienced an incredible healing in that shofar ritual, and my quality of life has been different ever since.

Having experienced that shift in my being from the shofar, I now felt strongly that I needed to develop a new relationship with a shofar of my own. My first thought was to go out and buy one (how else does one get a shofar, after all!). Then I recalled a good friend of mind, a “brother” of mine, really, who knows shofar in and out, from every angle and perspective, a true Ba’al Shofar. I remembered he had discussed a desire to lead a workshop in making shofarot from the raw horns. So I called him and told him I was in need of a shofar – would he help me make one, or if not, at least help me find a good one? He responded immediately: he had just procured three oryx (gemsbok) horns, and what a great opportunity this would be to get to know them!

Three days later I drove up his driveway and we greeted each other. He pulled out a whole collection of raw horns: rams’ horns, bison horns, goat, cow, sheep, and finally, three straight, black, oryx horns. We handled the horns for a while, talked about shofar and what it meant to connect to the animal that had left its horn behind for us. He spoke of where one can get such horns, of experiences he’d had with ranchers who had given him horns still attached to skulls, some with soft tissue still attached, of how powerful and meaningful it would be to raise an animal, slaughter it for food, then utilize each part of it to create something of use, in this way really respecting and knowing the animal. He spoke of the difficulties of removing the horn sheath (which would become the shofar) from the underlying bone within it, of how commercial manufacturers of shofarot straighten the curve in the horn to allow the hole to be drilled, and of many other aspects of shofar-making. Then he asked me to choose the horn I wanted to work with.

I was immediately drawn to the curved ram’s horn. It still contained bone, and it would require extensive work. In addition, it already had some cracks in it, so that it was unlikely to yield a good instrument in the end. I did not find myself drawn to the cow or buffalo horns, and bovine horns are not used to make shofarot from a halachic perspective. The three oryx horns were nearly identical, and their relatively straight shape was not what I generally imagined when I thought of shofar. But then I recalled pictures I’d seen of the conquest of Jericho, showing Hebrew priests and warriors blasting long straight shofarot. 

I spent some time with each oryx horn, noting how this one had a slight curve, how this other one a sharper point, how many spiraling rings this one had. Eventually I settled on “my” horn, feeling how balanced it felt in my hands. I had chosen a horn with a slight curve towards its narrow end, and I went through a difficult process deciding where to cut it at the narrow end. If I cut it too far down, the mouthpiece might be too small, and I wasn’t sure I could successfully drill a straight hole through to the inner cavity of the horn because of the curve. But if I cut is shorter, there would be less curve and I could drill it out more surely, but the mouthpiece would be too big and it would be less aesthetically pleasing.

I finally chose the place to cut, where there would be some curve yet I had a relatively straight shot to drill the hole in the narrow end. I cut off the point, marveling at the hard texture of the horn material under the surface. I next drilled a ¼ inch hole down the center of the narrow end, attempting to connect the tip to the cavity within the horn further down – i.e making it contiguously hollow from the mouth end to the wide end. But the drill bit wasn’t long enough, and I estimated I had another 2 inches to go to meet the inner cavity. I carved out the mouthpiece which let me drill a bit deeper, but still ~ 1 ½ inches to go. This gap was bridged by heating up an iron rod in a propane flame and using the hot rod tip to burn the horn material in the bottom of the drilled hole, producing a pungent odor of burning horn. This process took quite a while – heating the rod, extending the depth of the hole, heating the rod, burning again.

It was sometime near the end of this process, having drilled and burned into the substance of the horn, that I lifted the shofar to my mouth to try to sound it, and, breathing in, inhaled the smoke recently aerosolized by the last episode of burning. It was a transformative breath, that one, in which I took into my body the spirit of the animal whose horn was now my shofar. I blew the first tentative blast on the new shofar and smiled. It wasn’t a particularly strong or clear blast, but I knew it was just the beginning.

I bid my dear friend a huge thank you and goodbye, and headed for home to practice with my new shofar, eagerly anticipating a relationship that would grow as I got to know it, learned how to coax its intrinsic sounds from it, to express the spirit of its original owner, and allow me to meld with that spirit to bring it’s voice to its new function as an implement of healing and community.

Marc Weigensberg, December 28, 2009

Shofar as "Talking Stick"

Get a bunch of Jews together, or almost any group of urban dwellers, and most of us become so focused on what we are going to say, that we forget to listen to others. Judiasm is a path built on "shema", listening, so the talking stick council circle used by many tribal cultures, becomes a powerful tool for creating community and awakening the latent wisdom of the group.

In Jewish council circles, the shofar makes an excellant talking stick. It not only represents a message to be delivered, but the importance of hearing -- as we are commanded to hear shofar on Rosh Hashanah.

Click here for more on talking sticks.

Here is a post that suggests a method for using a shofar in a Torah Circle as practiced in the Coastside Torah Circle founded by Aryae Coopersmith and Wendy Berk in Half Moon Bay, California:

Preparation

• A group of eight to 20 people, seated in a circle, with a table in the middle, is ideal.
• Do whatever preparation works for your group to get into sacred circle, such as the traditional Torah blessing, singing, davenen, meditation.
• Make sure everyone understands that their primary responsibility is to listen deeply to each other.

Three Circles

• First circle - read the text. Go around the circle. Each person reads a little, until the parsha (or whatever text you are studying) is complete. No comments or discussion.
• Second circle - talking stick. Place a sacred object, such as a shofar, on the table to use as a talking stick. Each person who wants to has an opportunity to pick up the talking stick, and give over whatever is in his/her mind or heart in response to the reading. There are no comments or cross talk; only the person with the talking stick may speak. When each person is done speaking, they replace the talking stick on the table.
• Third circle - further discussion. When everyone who wants to has had the chance to speak with the talking stick, the group takes a little time for further comments or discussion. Normal discussion is fine.

Conclusion

• Do a concluding ceremony that works for your group, such as a healing circle, conclusion of davenen, singing.   

Shofar in Hospital

In this beautiful story, the author could call on a rabbi to sound shofar in her hospital room. But one does not need to be clergy to perform the mitzvot of visiting the sick and sounding shofar for those unable to attend synagogue services on Rosh Hashanah. Please see Hearing Shofar: The Still Small Voice of the Ram's Horn, Chapter  2-10 - "Blowing Shofar for the Sick and Confined" to learn more about participating in Shofar Corps.

An Improvised Holiday

Hospital-bound, She Found a Way to Celebrate Rosh Hashanah

By Jane Falk

Published in Forward, September 09, 2009, issue of September 18, 2009.

Bad enough that my heartbeat went berserk and I had to be hospitalized. But on Rosh Hashanah? And me, an observant Jew?! Not only would I miss the synagogue service I so loved, and not have visitors because they were forbidden to drive, but how could I possibly adhere to the High Holy Day commandments? Sure, God would forgive me — my life was at stake — but I couldn’t bear the thought of ushering in the New Year without its glorious ritual.

DAVID SPIElER

Blowing the Shofar: Rabbi Yehuda Ferris made the traditional call from a hospital room in Berkeley, Calif.

The hospital has its own rituals, I soon discovered, beginning with admissions.
“My husband is Jewish, too,” said the clerk at the Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley, Calif., as I checked in, while glancing at the religious affiliation on the form I had just filled out.

“Is he a good husband?” I asked, at a loss for the right thing to say.

“Yes! My mother taught me that Jewish men make good husbands, and she was right.”

*Hmm, I thought, we’ve gone from pariahs to prime marriage material.

After registration, I took the elevator to the sixth-floor telemetry unit, where my arrhythmia would be monitored for three days while I began a new medication. I approached the nurses’ station with trepidation. I held little hope that my religious requirements would be understood, much less accommodated.

“For religious reasons, I can’t take calls starting at sunset, or turn my lights on or off, or buzz for help,” I told the head nurse. Could anything sound weirder?

I didn’t even ask about lighting candles. Not a good idea with oxygen around.

But she didn’t blink. “Just write down the names of people you will permit the desk to update on your condition,” she said. “When evening comes, I’ll tape your light switch and put up a sign. If you need a nurse, you can just walk out and find one, since you’ll be on a portable monitor. No problemo.” *Evidently, in Berkeley anybody’s ritual goes. Whew!

“What about meals?” I said with a sigh. “I’m strictly kosher.” Would this be like Nebraska? A friend there requested “no pork or leavened bread” on Passover; her hospital platter arrived with bacon and a note saying “allergic to pork and toasted bread.”

“I’ll send up a dietician,” the nurse said.

And she did. A Jewish dietician — intermarried, of course — who spent an hour reviewing available choices, filling out menus and waxing nostalgic about the kosher home of her childhood. The kitchen adhered to our requests, but the packaged main dish never arrived hot. Well, better cold than *treyf.

The next issue was to hear the shofar, the hallmark of the holiday. But the hospital rabbi was on vacation, the head chaplain informed me. What? Would a priest use his vacation days for Christmas?! Then I remembered that Yehuda Ferris, the Berkeley Chabad rabbi, had offered to come by. I called him.

“Sure. And get me the room numbers of the other Jewish patients so I can blow shofar for them, too,” he requested in true Chabad spirit.

“Sorry, the HIPAA laws prohibit disclosing religion except to the official hospital chaplains,” the head chaplain said.

I had a brainstorm: The rabbi would blow it over the loudspeaker like a “Code Blue.” (It hadn’t occurred to me that using a mic — electricity — was forbidden). I appealed to the head nurse.

“No way. That’s imposing your customs on others,” she said.

“But surely you broadcast carols on Christmas,” I responded.

“As a matter of fact we don’t. If we did it for Christmas, we’d have to do it for every religion’s holidays. Do you have any idea how many different religions are represented here every day?” she asked.

Foiled by political correctness. The horn would be blown in my room.

Oy, how would my 87-year-old Christian roommate respond? She hadn’t uttered a peep when I kept my light on all night (I made the bracha [prayer] over a light bulb instead of candles), but the shofar was pushing it.

“I have a Jewish son-in-law; I know all about Rosh Hashanah,” my roommate said, looking forward to the event. Sure enough, on the afternoon of the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Ferris marched into my hospital room. His black fedora was cocked gangster-like to the right, and the tails of his frock coat flapped with every step. His svelte, youthful wife followed behind, pushing the youngest of their 10 children in a stroller.

The news traveled fast. My Kenya-born nurse rushed into the room and brought a Jewish colleague, who was proud to be an insider.

“Te-ki-yah.” I could hear the prayer book representation of the shofar’s sound in its first blast. Through the picture window, the bearded rabbi, head thrown back, the curved horn reaching up from his lips, was silhouetted against the rolling hills like a transplanted Chagall. He elongated the pitch-perfect “iy” so that the plaintive cry for attention from above reverberated inside me.

“Shevarim.” The interrupted chords of the second sequence embodied my feelings of my humility and brokenness in the face of the Creator.

“Teruah.” The staccato notes of the third blast were my own heartbeats, now in regular rhythm, both pleading and grateful. My body quivered along with the notes, and tears rolled down my face.

“Tekiya.” Everyone in the room, Jew and non-Jew, stood transfixed.

The hospital room had been transformed into a synagogue whose congregation consisted of my Kenyan nurse, my 87-year-old roommate with a Jewish son-in-law, a Jewish nurse with a non-Jewish husband, plus assorted passersby, and it felt holy.

God must have smiled, too: He gave me a very good year.

Jane Falk is a consultant in cross-cultural communications who holds a doctorate in linguistics from Princeton University. She is writing a memoir of her “colorful” journey into Orthodox Judaism. She lives in Berkeley, Calif.

The Horn of Hannukah

In my book, Hearing Shofar: The Still Small Voice of the Ram's Horn, Chapter 3-5 - Beyond the Days of Awe, explains why it would be historically appropriate to sound shofar on Hannukah. The following poem captures the bellicose sounds of the events the holiday commemorates:

The Feast of Lights

by Emma Lazarus

Kindle the taper like the steadfast star

  Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth,

And add each night a lustre, til afar

  An eightfold splendor shine above they hearth.

Clash, Israel, the cymblas, touch the lyre,

  Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh tongued horn;

Chant psalms of vict'ry tile the heart take fire,

  The Maccabean spirit leap new-born.

After retelling the story of the Maccabean revolt, the final four lines above are repeated at the end of the poem.

The complete poem is online in Poems for Young Judaeans (1917).

The Shofar Call

This poem by E. C. Ehrlich, published in Poems for Young Judaeans (1917), sums up the atmosphere and emotions surrounding the blowing of shofar during the Days of Awe:

Within the synagogue the light is dim;
  The air is hushed around;
Even the silence seems to pray until
  We hear the Shofar sound.

O Shofar, tell our souls we need not fear,
  Though long and hard the way; 
O Shofar, bind us with thy sacred strain,
Till each young heart will echo Israel's pain,
  And, like a trumpet clear,
Sound to the world the vow we pledge anew:
To bear all-worthy the name of Jew,
  Throughout the coming year


My thanks to Jewish Magazine for bringing the poem to my attention.

Songs from Yossele Rosenblatt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yossele Rosenblatt, Selected Recitatives, p. 34

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yossele Rosenblatt, Selected Recitatives, p. 38

 

Shofar Sounds on the Internet

http://www.chadishmedia.com/Sounds%20of%20the%20SHOFAR.mp3

http://www.jewishmag.com/71mag/shofar/shofar.mp3

The next demonstrates a Sephardic sound from the Jews of Rhodes. It is at www.rhodesjewishmuseum.org/audios. According to the site:  "This is a 1973 recording of a portion of the blowing of the shofar during Rosh Hashana and the prayers before it. It is from the synagogue services of the Jews who emigrated from Rhodes to Los Angeles, which was then called the Sephardic Hebrew Center. The person blowing the shofar is Morris Mizrahi (the “tokeah”), who was born in Rhodes in 1905. He attended the Kahal Grande synagogue in Rhodes as a child, and he emigrated to the United States in 1919. The sound of the shofar in a Rhodesli Sephardic synagogue is a raw spiritual sound which is louder and more pronounced than the sounds heard in most other synagogues."

An upbeat children's song by Moma Doni called "Shofar Blowin Band" has some nice shofar blasts.  http://mamadoni.com/music/02_Shofar_Blowin_Band_clip.mp3. 


Alvin Curran takes his electronic shofar into acoustical realms not ordinarily heard in shul, but certainly expressive of the emotional content of shofar.  See http://alvincurran.com/music excerpts/Shofar Tel Aviv hiMP3.mp3.

Amazing blowing, in a non-Jewish context:
http://videolog.uol.com.br/video.php?id=352980

Shofar in Music

Some people say shofar is just a signaling device and not capable of expressing the emotional content that is the core of the musical experience. I disagree, and so apparently do the following composers. They have written musical pieces that either include shofar instrumentation or have musical motifs based on shofar blasts.

This Post is a work in progress. You can find out more about the composers by doing a web search on their names plus the word "shofar." Please send me suggestions for additional composers.

Adler, Samuel

(b. 1969, Bucharest), a Romanian composer of orchestral and chamber works.

COMPOSITIONS

Labyrinthe

2001, "a piece for a soloist playing seven different non-conventional amplified instruments (shofar, khaen, accordion, Tibetan conch, tromba lontana, cello with scordatura, Zen singing bowls) and orchestra. It was commissioned by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung and written for a very special performer - Andrei Kivu, who possesses all these unique skills and a passion for exploring so many sound sources.

"The labyrinth is a dreamlike shape, very appropriate for a surrealistic aesthetical approach in a postmodern spirit, with lots of possible cuts and many structural 'jumps', replacing the uniformity and the homogeneity of the 'real' world with the fantasy's variety and plurality. The surrealistic combination of events is ruled by the laws of dream, which infringe and surpass traditional, conventional principles. The work has bizarre sonorous decisions, troubled hierarchies, superposed musical levels, various 'anomalies' crossing the music and changing its logical itinerary - all these leading to an 'alternative artistic world' following the suggestions of some famous paintings: 1. Tourbillon des signes (Hérold), 2. L'objet invisible (Giacometti), 3. Assemblages (Picasso) 4, Fascination (Brauer), 5. Pensée interrompue par un objet blanc (Dominiquez), 6. Désintegration (Duchamp), 7. Terre d'ombre (Tanguy).

"The work was commissioned by the 'Warsaw Autumn' Friends' Foundation and financed with funds from the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung." (www.warsaw-autumn.art.pl/02/composers/c30.html)

Labyrinthe II

2003, scored for shofar, khaen [mouth organ], accordion, dung-kar [Tibetan horn], tromba lontana, cello [with scordatura], zheng [Chinese zither], Tibetan singing bowls), and a small orchestra. The work received a Creative Schoorship from the Siemens Cultural Foundation. (Recorded on SIMN 2003: 13th International New Music Week Bucharest, Romanian Radio Broadcast Society Catalog Number 118, 2004)

Images Flottantes

2003, a chamber piece scored for shofar, flute, frame drum, khaen, and  accordion.

COMMENTS

Her husband/collaborator, Andrei Kivu, plays shofar; the duo are both improvisationalists and have performed in the European new music circuit.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

www.composers21.com/compdocs/angheli.htm

www.cimec.ro/Muzica/Pers/IrinelAnghel.htm

Asia, Daniel

clip:  http://www.danielasia.net/SharedDocuments/soundfiles/DanielAsia/Breath-JobLongedfortheGrave.mp3

Poems set by Daniel Asia: Breath In A Ram’s Horn, Sumit, CD and DVD; Songs From The Page Of Swords, Sumit, CD, Settings of Pines poems available at Theodore Presser, music publisher: Pines Songs, Ossabaw Island Dream; She; Songs From the Page of Swords; Breath In A Ram’s Horn. These settings have been performed by various chamber groups and orchestras including Musical Elements, Arizon and Seattle Symphonies both here and abroad at such venues as Copper Union, Merken Hall and the 92nd St. Y in NYC as well as in Albert Hall in London. Performances have been well reviewed.

Breath in a Ram's Horn for High Voice and Piano (1995-96) -- 13'
Published: #141-40045
Commission Information: Paul Sperry, tenor
Premiere Information: Paul Sperry and Tannis Gibson, Tucson, AZ, February 9, 1997

music published by Theodore Presser: #141-40045

Summit Records DCD286: Daniel Asia: Ivory
Jonathan Shames, piano; The Bridge Ensemble

"I especially liked "Ram’s Horn", which recalled various aspects of the Jewish experience and explored Pines’ stormy relationship with his late parents. Some of the music, with its oft-repeated and heavily pedaled passages, seemed to suggest the relentlessness of the "unmediated suffering" visited upon Job. And in a wonderfully catchy tune that would have graced the finest Yiddish musical, Pines finally comes to terms with his parents whom he can never escape." - Ken Keuffel Jr., The Arizona Daily Star

Avitsur, Haim

Bakshi, Alexander

(b. 1952, Sukhumi). Georgian-born Russian composer of stage and orchestral works. He is a pioneer of a new form of musical experience entitled theatre of sound, in which sounds replace words and actions are directly connected to the musical content. He has written at least on work scored for shofar.

COMPOSITIONS

The Polyphony of the World
(musical mystery/theatre of sound, vocalise, choreography by Svetlana Voskresenskaya), tenor, Abakan-region folk voice (+ folk instruments), Dakota-Red Indians folk voice (+ folk instruments), 2 Russian folk voices (both + folk instruments), Tuva-region folk voice (+ folk instruments), actor, 2 performance artists, shaman, assistant shaman, female dancer, mixed chorus, violin, shell horn (+ dung-chen) (Tibetan horn), zurna (+ duduk) (Armenian folk instruments), 6 percussion, brass ensemble (French horn [+ Alphorn], trumpet [+ shofar], trombone [+ didgeridoo], tuba), string orchestra, 2001.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

www.composers21.com/compdocs/bakshia.htm

http://home.wanadoo.nl/ovar/bakshi.htm

Beck, Stephen David

Concerto Grosso by Stephen David Beck, who plays shofar. Conch is played by Jeff Albert.  It is scored for Shofar, Conch Shell, and 4 Laptops

Benedict, David

"Shofar Service" 1976. 

 

Berio, Luciano

(b. 1925, Oneglia, Imperia – d. 2003, Rome). Italian composer of stage, orchestral, chamber, choral, and vocal works, also a conductor. At least three of his works are influenced by shofar.

COMPOSITIONS

Shofar

Source text: ‘Die Posaunenstelle’ by Paul Celan, mixed chorus, orchestra, 8'; première 1995, London. BBC Philharmonic, Charles Mackerras conducting; Casa Ricordi, Milan, publisher

The Independent (UK) says "Berio's shofar is thrice blown in the words of Paul Celan and advanced on a moving current of orchestral texture within which are heard all manner of reiterative trumpettings. A quartet of saxophones, the pinched report of muted trumpets, the shiver of vibraphone - these are contemporary sound references - but the feeling is of old beliefs being carried forward to their time-honoured conclusion, though in a deeper sense remaining open-ended. When Berio adopted the third movement of Mahler's Second Symphony for the central panel of his Sinfonia, he sought to evoke - as Mahler himself had done - a never-ending stream of consciousness, the eternal treadmill of life 'going on ... going on ...' Shofar finds a resolution of sorts, and stops. But only inasmuch as we can hear it. Because the shofar will sound."

Ofanim

"Ofanim gives a taste, if only in concert form, of what to expect from the composer's ... music theater pieces. ... The biblical text, sung in Hebrew, veers back and forth between the whirling apocalyptic visions of Ezekiel trapped in a sunbaked desert and luxuriant erotic scenes take from the Song of Songs, a startling juxtaposition that Berio seizes upon and turns to his musical advantage. The title means 'modes' or 'wheels' in Hebrew, an image evoked by Ezekiel and made audible by the composer as he craftily blends the piercing sound of his double wind-percussion orchestra with the softer accents of a boys' choir, sending both out to rotate through space via speakers strategically placed about the hall. It is a stunning aural adventure, suddenly interrupted by an elaborate cadenza for trombone. Acting as a sort of super-shofar, that instrument introduces Ezekiel's last harrowing vision, a mother torn from her own land and 'planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty ground' - a poignant finale that suggests to Berio, 'the memory of all the mothers of our time, of all the exiles and the havocs that have left deep woonds in our conscience.'" (Peter G. Davis, "Electric Avenues," New Your Magazine, Nov. 10, 1997)

Hör

for Chorus and Orchestra (1995); prologue to Requiem of Reconciliation (Requiem der Versöhnung), a collaborative by 14 composers commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. In Movement I, Prolongo, contributed by Berio, trombone blasts represent the shofar.

"'Listen your way in/with your mouth' is an especially haunting line in the haunting body of work left by poet Paul Celan. Like much of his poetry, the line swallows itself as a serpent swallows its tail; the words work paradoxically, eddying inwards toward some kind of cryptic self-cancellation -- hearing becomes speaking, the mouth-cavity a drill-bit or spade. But in that "logic of contradiction" lies a sphere of revelation wholly its own: the sublime and the horrific disclose themselves better through scrims and veils.

"'Listen your way in/with your mouth' are the last lines of Celan's poem "The Trumpet Part," set by Luciano Berio in his remarkable prologue to the 1995 group-composed Requiem of Reconciliation; Berio's contribution stands alone under the title Hör (Listen), and also represents one of a number of works by Berio bound up in Celan's poetry -- verse signed and scarred by the Holocaust and the camps.

"Even while god-forsaken, Celan's poetry seems inextricably bound to religious images, and Berio finds in "The Trumpet Part" a setting of tremendous symbolic strength: the beginning for trombones is marked "Shofar" and refers to the ancient Jewish ram's horn which heralded worship. The calls plunge to symphonic sound into a kind of prehistoric realm, and eventually precipitate a sonic quake from the orchestra and chorus, swirling in shouts and elastic fanfares. But this opening works less like an engine than like a massive blast or wave, gradually dispersing its effect into ripples and echoes, a ringing in the ears." (Seth Brodsky, All Music Guide)

COMMENTS

In his autobiography, Berio quotes Exodus 20:18 and says, "'... all the people saw the voices...and the sound of the shofar.' The link between light and sound, between light and word, is common to all narratives of origins, of primordial events, of myths and apprehensions of the world; and music often appears to be the most powerful mediator between the eye and the ear,  between the the mobile and extreme points of a space that has still to be explored and interrogated. A space that seems at times to lead us to the threshold of a mystery. A space which -- with stage sets, lighting, costumes, voices and instruments -- we insistently endeavor to secularize, but which despite all our efforts always seems to contain an intangible, perhaps a sacred, core."   Remembering the Future, by Luciano Berio, 2006, pg 121.

ADDITIONAL INFO

www.composers21.com/compdocs/beriol.htm

Berlinski, Herman

Bernstein, Leonard

Binder, Abraham Wolfe

Bitensky, Laurence

AWAKE, YOU SLEEPERS! (2002)
Arrangement of Awake, you Sleepers! Concerto for Trumpet and Wind Ensemble
For Trumpet and Piano

• Duration: 17’ (3 movements)
• Instrumentation: trumpet, piano.
• Publisher: Silly Black Dog Music (ASCAP)

1. Tekiah 2. Shevarim 3. Teruah

Each of the three movements of Awake, You Sleepers! is based on one of the three calls associated with the blowing of the shofar. Each movement is also preceded by well-known verses from the Rosh Hashanah liturgy. Much of the music for Awake, You Sleepers! is based on Rosh Hashanah motives and melodies that occur in the German/East-European musical tradition. 

http://www.larrybitensky.com/music/chamber.html

Bloch, Ernest (1880-1959)

The repeated-note patterns and augmented intervals in Schelomo (1915-16), perhaps his most popular work from his set of compositions known as the

“Jewish Cycle,” suggest the call of shofar. "All of Bloch’s Jewish-inspired works contain passionate and colorful writing within a keen formal structure and have become the cornerstone of Bloch’s legacy."  (TWENTIETH-CENTURY COMPOSERS INSPIRED BY JEWISH CULTURE: SELECTIONS FROM THE

SOLO AND COLLABORATIVE PIANO REPERTOIRE, Susan M. Slingland, Doctor of Musical Arts, 2006 Dissertation)

Borzova, Alla

Bolter, Norman

Plays trombone and other brass instruments.

Air-EV Productions, 675 VFW Parkway, PMB 352, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA

Ancestors (Serpent, digeridoo, shofar)

www.air-ev.com

Brio, Daniel

Burger, Bruce

Cohn, Steve

Curran, Alvin
Alvin Curran (b. 1938): Crystal Psalms: Part 2 (1988) [29:20]
Crystal Psalms (1994): New Albion NA067

This work was written to commemorate the Holocaust and to pay specific homage to the fiftieth anniversary of Kristallnacht. It was performed as a unique radio concert involving a group of musicians in six different countries. Each group consisted of a small mixed chorus, a string or wind quartet, a percussionist, and an accordionist. Radio was used as a geographic instrument of sorts; each group of performers performed simultaneously while all six separate performances were mixed and broadcast live to listeners throughout the world. Besides the live performers, a pre-recorded tape containing sounds of Jewish life (the sounding of the shofar, Jews praying at the Wailing Wall, chant and Jewish lessons, etc.) was also mixed in the broadcast. Sounds of breaking class, telephones ringing, cars running, and other sounds from everyday life are also heard throughout the work. The work as a whole emulates chaos; the listeners are left to make sense of the structured disorder inspired by the horrendous event of 1938. — Angela R. (http://www.cune.org/joseph.herl/index.htm, 2012-June-16)

Desert Wind - Musical Ensemble

Kedoshim

Album: She is a Tree of Life

(c) Alan Bachman, Desert Wind

www.desertwindmusic.com/

Elgar, Edward

Faberman, Harold

Fields, Matthew

"Kabala" - MMC Recordings MMC 2087

contains Matthew H. Fields' Call of the Shofar for four trombones

Fromm, Herbert

Gluck, Bob

Goldsmith, Jerry 

The composer for film used shofar in the soundtrack of Planet of the Apes and Aliens. (Shofar is also used in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Leonard Roseman - Composer, where "The shofar cries out and the Ape Army music double-times it to the precipice."

Goldstein, Gil

Golijov, Osvaldo

Gronich, Shlomo

Halevy, Fromental

Hamburg, Jeff

Hiller, Wilfried

Kopytman, Mark

Lateef, Yusef

Lees, Benjamin

London, Frank

Mahler, Gustov

McCreary, Bear

Miller, Malcolm

Minsky, Aaron

The composer and performer is also the "rock celloist" called "Von Cello."

February 26, 2010 — The composer performs the last movement of his Judaic Concert Suite for solo cello on television. From the published music book notes:

The Judaic Concert Suite combines two elements from the traditional cello repertoire. One element harks back to Ernest Bloch, well known for his short works for cello and piano based on Jewish themes. This suite, however, is for solo cello, and with its robust sound and use of counterpoint of chords, it is also in the tradition of the Bach Cello Suites. What is new is the use of modern melodies and rhythms and the way the three movements form a unified whole, musically and spiritually.

Sound the Shofar begins with the call of the ram's horn, known in Hebrew as the shofar. The shofar is blown during the Jewish High Holidays. Its soulful cry is believed to bring the listener closer to an experience of the divine. After dancing at the unification of God and man, and praying to the Lord of the Universe who exists beyond time, it is time for us to open our ears to the shofar and find our own path to the King who reigns over all humanity.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INd-Ov1SSNk

For more on the composer, see http://hearingshofar.blogspot.com/2010/06/one-composers-spiritual-journey.html

Mostel, Raphael

New York City based composer, has composed at least 18 works for shofar since 1985, and has broadcast an ongoing series of reports on the instrument on WNYC and National Public Radio.

1985 “Ceremonial for the Equinox" shofar septet

1994 "True No", commissioned by WNYC Foundation for its 50th anniversary and dedicated to memory of Janusz Korczak and the rights of children. Massed shofars in finale.

Normandeau, Robert

Rodriguez, Roberto Juan

The composer is known for synthesizing Cuban and Jewish music. His soundtrack for the film, The First Basket, begins with the shofar blasts played by the composer. The blasts serve the dual function of calling the audience to attention, and establishing the Hebraic content of the film.  The film is a documentary about the origins of basketball among Jewish immigrant families living in settlement houses, and the continuing Jewish involvement with the sport through the founding of the National Basketball Association until today.  (I highly recommend the film.)

Savall, Jose

"Jordi Savall i Bernadet (born 1941, in Igualada, Catalonia, Spain) is a Spanish-Catalan viol player and composer. He is one of the major figures in the field of early music since the 1970s, largely responsible for bringing the viol (viola da gamba) back to life on the stage. His repertory ranges from Medieval to Renaissance and Baroque music." From http://www.last.fm/music/Jordi+Savall

"Jerusalem: A City of Two Peaces  There are few musicians as mesmerizing as legendary viola da gambist Jordi Savall, whose vibrant performances have captivated audiences for decades. He returns to the Boston Early Music Festival with Hespèrion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, and Al-Darwish with a monumental program that draws on music and texts from the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions to chart the history of Jerusalem from 1200 BC to the present day. From the sound of the shofars in the Jericho fanfare, to a series of songs, laments, and instrumental works that have become embedded in the cultural fabric of Jerusalem, this fascinating program promises a most memorable music and multi-cultural experience.

"The new Jerusalem set opens with “Fanfare of Jericho, 1200 B.C.,” a fanciful imagining of the (probably apocryphal) shofar performance said to have brought down the house, so to speak. As the composer of a not entirely dissimilar shofar septet myself, in my 1985 “Ceremonial for the Equinox,” I admired Savall’s audacity in choosing this as his over-the-top opening gambit, even as I marveled at the cinematic technical quality of the recording. The “B.C.” in the title — rather than the more value-neutral “BCE” — is one small wrinkle that says something about the unintended biases of the project. Still, the shofar turns out to be a leitmotif binding together what is, at bottom, a wide-ranging survey. And the second CD ends with another leitmotif, 'Final Fanfare: Against the Barriers of the Spirit.’” http://www.forward.com/articles/103557/

Jericho Fanfare

http://www.last.fm/music/Jordi+Savall/_/Shofars+Call

http://play.last.fm/preview/118670519.mp3

http://www.last.fm/music/Jordi+Savall/Jerusalem/Fanfare+Of+Jericho%2C+1200+Av.+B.C.

Scheinman, Jenny

The Shofar Place (8:27), on album The Rabbi's Lover

"Violinist Scheinman brings diverse talents and sensibilities to this recording. She has taken classical training at the prestigious Oberlin College conservatory, and draws a full, rich and very precise sound from her instrument. She has both a personal and a scholarly interest in Jewish music and legend, and on this recording interprets traditional material and also composes within the tradition. But Scheinman has learned how to mix her musical metaphors, working with the eclectic West Coast group Charming Hostess, which combines Bulgarian choral music with Jewish klezmer (among other things), and she has also worked with jazz luminaries such as Bill Frisell, John Zorn and Cecil Taylor." (http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/w93n) "Occasionally, as on "The shofar place" there are hints of Ashkenazic prayer." (http://www.klezmershack.com/bands/scheinman/lover/scheinman.lover.html) It is a modern cut inspired by a line from Paul Celan. Play Clip.

Schwartz, Stephan

Shatin, Judith

Stein, Judith

Stein, Ira

Stern, Robert 

Shofar is an oratorio in four parts for soprano, tenor, and two bass-baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra, with a libretto by Catherine Madsen. The work was premiered in November, 2006, at Sanders Theatre at Harvard, performed by the Coro Allegro chorus, David Hodgkins - artistic director. An expanded edition had its first performance on November 15, 2009 at the same venue.

According to the composer's website, "The oratorio is not so much about the shofar as what the shofar represents. In Judaism, there is a tradition which mentions that the four blasts of the shofar (ram's horn) which are sounded during the High Holy Days signify the progression from wholeness to brokenness to shattering and back to wholeness.

"The shofar blasts in the oratorio Shofar stand as a metaphor for the story of what happens at Sinai. The story told by the oratorio begins with the wholeness of the Israelites as God is revealed to them through the giving of the Ten Commandments, then continues with the brokenness and fear that leads to the worshiping of the golden calf. The shattering blasts of the shofar tell of the shattering of the tablets as Moses expresses his anguish upon seeing the dance around the golden calf, and the return to wholeness occurs as God takes pity on the Israelites and gives them a second edition of the commandments."

Audio excerpts    Score excerpts    Lyrics

The following works are intimately related to the oratorio:

Recitative (Yom Teruah) (2001) for solo cello comissioned by the RNCM Manchester International Cello Festival, 2001, for cellist Matt Haimovitz. Available on Oxingale Records.

Recitative (Yom Teruah) (2006) for solo viola.

Tekiah G'dolah, reflections on Shofar (2007) for cello and piano. Commissioned by Joel Krosnick and Gilbert Kalish.

In an interview, the composer says:

When I was growing up in New Jersey, my brother and I would accompany our parents to the local synagogue to celebrate Rosh Hashona, which is the Jewish New Year. When I was young I must admit that a lot of the service got a little bit tiresome after awhile. But then the shofar service began, which was a very special service as part of the Rosh Hashona holiday. When that first shofar blast was sounded, it really blew me away.

That must have put something in my head about the sound of the shofar. I was a young kid sitting in a synagogue for many hours. But that call woke me up and little did I know that..s what the shofar really represented, a kind of wake-up call.

The blasts of the shofar are rich in meaning. They really tell a story of the Jewish High Holy Days .. also called the Days of Awe. These are days of self- reflection, starting with wholeness, leading to a sense of breaking apart in recognition of our human weakness, and ending with a sense of having asked forgiveness, and being able to continue in the face of your weakness. It..s a journey of reexamining yourself, taking stock of your life and finally coming out at the other end whole again.

That..s really what Shofar, the oratorio, is about. It's taking the sounds of those blasts and using them as a metaphor for starting off whole and traveling through the shattering of your soul and then becoming whole again. It's a way of expressing those shofar blasts.

That idea, the sonic brilliance of the shofar really set the piece musically in motion. Then I learned of the interpretation of the shofar blasts and used that as a metaphor for creating the oratorio. Of course, you can't write an oratorio just based on a brief story like that, you need a narrative in order to present that story in musical terms. And so, I found this wonderful librettist, Catherine Madsen, who took the story from Exodus, the revelation at Sinai and the presentation of the commandments to the Israelites by Moses. We incorporated that basic idea for generating the libretto for the whole oratorio, because God giving the commandments to the Israelites represent wholeness .. the consummation of the covenantal relationship. But of course when Moses came down..he took his time, 40 days coming off the mountain..the Israelites were encamped and they built the golden calf because they were getting impatient and frightened about Moses taking so long, and ..where is this man? Where is our leader, the person who has told us about this God we cannot see?? Let's stop believing in this unknown God and build us an image we can see... And of course, Moses comes to the encampment, sees the golden calf and in anger smashes the tablets. In the oratorio the tablet smashing represents the ..breaking apart.. of the shofar calls. Then Moses and God have to renegotiate the covenant between God and the Israelites to become whole again.

Once I had the idea of Shofar, a large work, in my mind, I also had the idea of writing a preliminary study piece that would give me a foundation for the work. This ended up to be about eight minutes in length, and is called ..Shofar, Prelude and Duet... It included a study of a beautiful passage from the Song of Songs, which translates: ..I am my beloved and my beloved is mine... That text represents the covenant that was established initially between God and the Israelites. I set that passage from Song of Songs as a duet that represented that covenant. And I also incorporated the sounds of the shofar calls, but in a stylized way. Catherine heard that study piece, and was very much taken with it. After that, we got together and really got down to the nitty gritty of establishing how were we going to translate this study piece into a full-fledged oratorio. The music of the study piece really laid out the whole melodic and harmonic foundation for the whole work.

I used an old technique- ..soggetto cavato.. .. literally ..carved subject.. in which the composer translates the applicable letters of a word into musical pitches.

I took the four letters from the word ..shofar´ which corresponded into musical tones from the German ..S.. = E-flat and ..H.. = B natural. The F and the A remain as is. I used those four notes, E-flat, B, F, A, as the generating tones for the oratorio.

But those are only four tones of the 12 note chromatic scale. I took the remaining 8 tones and formed a musical idea that takes on one of the most important functions in the entire work and occurs at critical junctures in the score. So, the work is based on that 8 tone scale and the tones that emanate from the word ..shofar...

Each stylized shofar blast [in each of the four sections of the work] is different as are the actual shofar blasts in the Rosh Hashana service. What the shofar blasts actually represent is what each section of the piece is about. So the first part is ..Tekiah,.. which means wholeness. That is the revelation at Sinai, representing the commandments. Part two, ..Shevarim.. begins the breaking apart of the relationship between God and the Israelites. Part three, ..Teruah.. is the third call in which things completely are shattered and smashed. It..s at that point that the allusion to the Holocaust enters in part three of the oratorio. That represents the complete smashing of the relationship. By this time in the oratorio the covenant between God and the Israelites has been shattered. It..s about people..s anger first at Moses, then the building of the golden calf, then Moses is angry at the people and he smashes the tablets, and God is also very angry. And we skip then from Moses.. fury and God..s anger to the reality of the 20th century annihilations, which are represented by the Holocaust. It..s a very big leap from the smashing of the tablets and the fury of God and Moses, to the actuality of the annihilations of the 20th century which are represented by the Holocaust. Both Catherine and I thought that in some way we had to allude to the shattering losses of the 20th century. At that point we bring in the Jacob Glatstein poem ..We received the Torah on Sinai, and in Lublin we gave it back. Dead men don..t praise God. The Torah was given to the living...
Lublin is a city in Poland in which there was an infamous concentration camp, Maidanek, an extermination camp. What happens in the third part of the oratorio is that after Catherine artfully connects the Exodus and the smashing of the tablets with the Holocaust, somehow you have to take the leap that we have to continue to believe. It..s biological, we go on breathing, even after the Holocaust. What happens is that even in spite of the mutual rejection of God and the people, they simply can..t get rid of each other. So in Exodus they need to renegotiate that relationship. And that..s what they do. Part four, ..Tekiah G..Dolah.. marks the renegotiation of the covenant.

The same thing happened after the Holocaust. Even as shattering a loss as that was, somehow life continues, and we breathe. The reference to Lublin is a parallel between the shattering loss in Exodus and the shattering losses of the 20th century.

[I did not use an actual shofar in the oratorio because] the piece is not about the shofar as an instrument. It..s about what those shofar calls represent: wholeness to breaking apart to being shattered to becoming whole again. I think if you were to hear the insertion of a real shofar sound in the context of the contemporary sounds of the modern orchestra (I eliminated that possibility very quickly) it would sound oddly out of place. It would have been too obvious a gesture. I wanted to write my own shofar calls that suggest the sound of the shofar, and incorporate stylized versions of them into the fabric of my own harmonic and melodic thinking. When the audience hears the stylized versions of the shofar calls, they..ll know they represent a contemporary version of the shofar.

Stock, David

www.classicsonline.com/catalogue/product.aspx?pid=5201
Tekiah, for trumpet and ensemble
1. Light, airy, propulsive  6:12
2. Warm, flexible tempo; fleeting, scurrying 8:08
3. With energy, relentlessly  5:06

Naxos 2006

Wall, Greg 
Greg Wall is senior rabbi at Sixth Street Community Synagogue in New York City. He also plays shofar, saxophone, clarinet, and other wind instruments the album, Ha’Orot-The Lights Of Rav Kook.  

Rabbi Itzchak Marmorstein, left, recites the poetry of Rabbi Kook as Rabbi Greg Wall, right, plays the shofar.

Describing the album, Publisher John Zorn of Tzadik Records (Cat. # 8137) says:

“A leading figure in the Jewish music scene for over thirty years, Greg Wall is one of the pioneers in blending Jewish music with jazz. His newest recording with his powerful ensemble Later Prophets is a colorful and provocative mixture of jazz and Jewish poetry and features the spiritual writings of Rabbi Avraham Itzchak HaCohen Kook, recently voted the most influential person in the shaping of modern Israel. Kook was a unique blend of the traditional and modern - and the music follows suit, with funky grooves, improvisations and even a few of Kook’s own compositions. With texts read by one of the greatest living scholars of Kook and his milieu, this is an important document of Jewish mysticism.”

Track Six, composed by Wall, is titled, "Shofar," and has a wonderful duet of sax and shofar played under the spoken words of Reb Kook. A sample can be heard at www.amazon.com/Shofar/dp/B002AVA0NE.


####

• T'Kah B'shofar
• From the album Philharmonic Experience
• © 1998 Knitting Factory Works

Kicking off with a shofar and saxophone improvisation, Psycho Semitic quickly establishes itself as something outside the traditional Jewish music jazz freakout. Not quite klezmer, not quite Zorn's fantastically free-forms, Hasidic New Wave finds a common ground behind traditionally Jewish musical elements and a fascinatingly complex jazz approach, free at times, rigid at others. Exuberant with brass, introspective with wobbly guitar lines, about every emotion you can think of is wrung out of the context. Each song clearly features a player's talents, and each takes the lead without taking center stage -- the playing is fantastic. Not just for the Chosen.
http://www.ink19.com/issues_F/98_08/wet_ink/music_gj/054_hasidic_new_wave_nf.html

Weisgall, Hugo

Wulfson, Richard

Zasloff, David

Bands named Shofar
Another manifestation of shofar in music is that several bands are named "Shofar", for example,

Shofar, a Polish jazz band, their members are Rogiński, Trzaska, and Moretti. Their Jewish roots can be sampled in this rendition of Adon Olam: http://wsm.serpent.pl/sklep/player.php?id=120068

Children's Songs

Shofar Blast by Peter and Ellen Allard. It's refrain is, "I like to hear the shofar blasts, happy happy New Year." Listen at http://transcontinentalmusic.com/mp3/951340.9.mp3

-----------------

If you know of other compositions with shofar influences, please let me know.