Anyone who has followed Amir Lev’s career over the past three or so decades may be in for a surprise next week. After 34 years on the scene, primarily as a husky-voiced simmering rocker, the singer-songwriter will lead an adventurous large-scale outing at the new Barby venue in Jaffa, on February 5-6 (doors open 8:30 p.m., shows start 10 p.m.), when he revisits one of his best-known albums, Paam Bachayim (Once in a Lifetime).
Since he started out as a professional musician, back in 1989, the 61-year-old guitarist-vocalist has built up a loyal fan base with his predominantly soul-searching tunes which have earned him the moniker of Israel’s Leonard Cohen.
But next week’s doubleheader sees the Galilee-based artist get down and dirty with the full-blown Israeli Andalusian Orchestra Ashdod which began life a couple of years before Lev started out on his own board-treading road.
This is quite a departure for him as he sets out to refashion numbers like “Kahol Veyarok” (Blue and Green), “Ananim Shehorim” (Black Clouds), and the title song off the 1998 record, which accrued generous airplay on the country’s various radio stations back in the day. A quarter of a century on, Lev takes a deep breath and plunges into largely uncharted waters for what promises to be a multi-stratified emotive and artistically intriguing odyssey for all concerned, audience included.
Lev and the Orchestra
Mind you, Lev and the ensemble are not complete strangers. “There was a show the orchestra did with Beri [Sacharoff] and Dikla and me, about two years ago. Each artist performed three songs with the orchestra. But this is the first I am doing a full album with them, and all that goes with that.”
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It is generally a good idea to have some knowledge of the people you are going to work with, but the Barby date is a very different kettle of fish. Surely, 25 years on, with 25 more years of gigging and recording and plain old street-level living, Lev comes into the current venture from a different take on life and his craft.
He says that, true to his nature, he just dived into the project head-on. It was an artistically existential matter of sink or swim. “If I had thought about all the pitfalls beforehand perhaps I wouldn’t have gotten into it. It was a spontaneous decision. I felt it was a wonderful [project] to do. I didn’t think about how my life has changed in the meantime, or how long ago it was that I made the record. I was excited and I felt it could be a powerful experience. It brings me closer to another part of myself.”
That sounds like a personal and professional homecoming. “I felt this project could connect me to my roots,” Lev adds. I wondered whether he had any Andalusian, or related, cultural strands to his genetic heritage. “No, but this helps to connect me to the place where I live, to the Middle East.”
“I felt this project could connect me to my roots."
Amir Lev
Like many Israeli artists of his generation, Lev grew up on a mostly Western musical diet, but the sounds emanating from this part of the world were never too far from his developing ear. “I grew up on Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. But I also heard Israeli music. I grew up in Holon and I listened to Mizrahi music.” That included one of the leaders of the Mizrahi musical pack. “I loved [iconic singer] Zohar Argov. I even went to one of his shows. He was something else.” He certainly was. “I knew all his songs. They were all around me. It was part of me.”
But the youngster was also looking for new vistas, new musical hills to climb. “When I started listening to American and British rock, bands like Grand Funk and Uriah Heep, it was something else. It really grabbed me. It was a fantastic new world we’d not seen in Israel back then.”
All of the above influences have, to a greater or lesser degree, informed Lev’s oeuvre which takes in eight studio albums, a couple of live recordings, and numerous synergies, as a musician and producer, with fellow pop and rock artists such as Shlomo Artzi and Geva Alon. Lev has also dipped deeply into more Middle Eastern climes over the years. For his seventh studio album, Hashmal Mihashemesh (Electricity from the Sun), he went for artists with more local cultural baggage, such as percussionist Hitam Bashara, oud player Natan Zohar, and kamanche (spike violin) player Noam Dayan.
I was still struggling with the idea of spanning the yawning genre, stylistic, and format chasm between Lev’s favored trio and quartet settings, with generally introspective textual material and charts, and getting on a stage with 20-plus instrumentalists playing music that has its roots in Medieval Islamic southern Spain, liberally seasoned with Jewish content.
“We are working on that,” Lev chuckles. “We are trying to connect with the beauty of Andalusian music and to preserve the sense of intimacy.” He believes he has the requisite toolbox to get the job done. “I have played Mediterranean and Arabic music. I have played with [veteran oud player-violinist] Yair Dallal. I know the genre well. I have a feel for it.”
Lev says he is also enjoying rubbing shoulders and elbows with the ensemble members and, in particular, the orchestra’s musical director and feted kamanche player Elad Levy. “It is great fun working with him. Elad is a wonderful musician. He has a fascinating way of thinking and vast musical knowledge. It is a privilege to be together with him on this.”
That may be so and it is surely a boon but, presumably, adapting the refashioned orchestral score to the original lyrics, and the way Lev proffers his words, written way back in 1998, is quite a mountain to climb. “It sometimes works really easily, and other times we have to really work at it to figure out how the text and music can flow together. It is interesting. It is riveting looking at something that is unresolved and following how it develops. We are all excited by the process. It’s fun.”
The Barby audiences should get that fun factor and, who knows, perhaps Lev’s inaugural orchestral two-step will lead to more of the same further down the rocker’s long and winding road.
For tickets and more information, click here.
