Zamir Revived

When Joshua Jacobson founded the Zamir Chorale of Boston in 1969, he became part of a tradition that goes back at least as far as 1899. That’s when the first Zamir Chorale--in Lodz, Poland--is believed to have been founded.

The Zamir groups (Zamir means nightingale or singing in Hebrew) spread throughout Europe and the United States early in the 20th Century, but by the 1950s the tradition was fading.

In New York, however, a man named Stanley Sperber decided to revive that tradition: He founded the Zamir Chorale of New York in the early 1960s. And it was Sperber, teaching at a summer camp for students run by Boston’s Hebrew College, who first introduced the then college-age Jacobson to classical Jewish music.

“I’d been exposed to Jewish folk music and also to classical,” said Jacobson, who was studying to be a conductor at the time, “but I’d never heard the two together.”

Jacobson liked what he heard, and so did a few of his fellow students. At Sperber’s suggestion, he started a Boston branch of the Zamir Chorale.

“That first year there were no audition requirements,” said Jacobson, who went on to earn degrees from Harvard and the New England Conservatory, and is now head of the music department at Boston’s Northeastern University.

“But as each year went by, our reputation grew, and we’ve been able to attract some of the area’s best choral singers.”

This past September, at the group’s annual audition, 25 singers tried out for just 7 new spots. And instead of its members being mostly students, the group is made up of an assortment of professionals who are devoted both to choral music and to having an outlet to express their Jewish heritage.

On Saturday and Sunday, the chorale’s 23-member traveling chamber group (the full chorale has 43 members) performs in Los Angeles as part of the University of Judaism’s Hanukkah celebration.

The program, conducted by Jacobson, is divided into four sections. The first is music about Jerusalem interspersed with a narrative and biblical quotes. The second features Jewish music from all over the world, including Eastern Europe, Spain and Africa.

The third portion is made up of songs that Jacobson discovered during the group’s trip to Israel this past summer (“I rely on my trips there to find the lastest Jewish songs,” he says); and the final part of the program is devoted to the Hanukkah celebration and will end with a candlelighting ceremony.

The Zamir Chorale of Boston performs “A Chanukah Celebration in Music and Song” Saturday at 8:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the Gindi Auditorium of the University of Judaism, 15600 Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles. Tickets are from $12.50 to $18. Reservations are requested. Call (213) 476-9777.