House concert raises $38,000-plus to help bring music back to Beth Israel
By Sherry Lucas | Originally published by Mississippi Today
Acclaimed international pianist Alon Goldstein’s solo recital at a Ridgeland house concert Wednesday night raised more than $38,700 for Beth Israel Congregation’s Piano Fund. The benefit sponsored by the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra used culture’s most universal language — music — as a tool for inspiration.
The event, an expression of sympathy and solidarity following the devastating arson fire at the synagogue Jan. 10, joins the outpouring of community support that followed the attack, and highlights the longstanding connection between MSO and Jackson’s Jewish community.
“In our congregation, music plays a huge part in our services. Our piano obviously was very damaged. This specific fundraiser will help with funds to get a new piano. … Once we get back in our synagogue, it will liven our spirits, knowing the community not only accepts us as we are, but wants us here,” Beth Israel Congregation President Zach Shemper said.
Concert capacity was limited to 65 only by space available in the private Bridgewater home, and scores of area music lovers gave generously to fund the restoration of Beth Israel’s music program and acquisition of a new piano. A silent auction of the painting “We Rise,” of hummingbirds against an abstract background by artist and temple trustee Marla Harbor, helped boost the total.
“MIssion achieved,” Martha Ross Thomas, event coordinator and host, said at the close of an evening she described as “transcendent.”
Israeli-born, internationally touring Goldstein calls Jackson “a home” — an affection built on multiple MSO guest appearances and solo recitals in the city over the years and his close friendship with the late Lester Senter Wilson, who directed the Wideman International Piano Competition he won in 1996.
Goldstein, scheduled as the star draw for “Mighty Keys,” MSO’s season-capping Bravo Series concert Saturday night at Thalia Mara Hall, offered time and talent for an additional fundraising event. As MSO leadership firmed up plans in February with Thomas for a house concert/benefit, she suggested, “Let’s do it with Beth Israel,” and they unanimously agreed, she said.
Damage to the synagogue was fresh and painful. “It seemed like one of the best things we could do,” as well as the most impactful, she said.
“It’s always beautiful to bring the community together, and I’m humbled to take part in it,” Goldstein said. “We live in times that seem to highlight our divisions rather than our common goals. That’s why evenings like this are so important, and I was extraordinarily moved by it.”
He performed a program of works of “the love triangle” of friendship, love and inspiration between 19th century composers and pianists Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. It provided a sneak preview of Goldstein’s guest artist appearance with MSO Saturday, when he’ll perform Brahms’ “Piano Concerto No. 1,” a work he hailed as one of the greatest in Western literature.
Thomas has served multiple MSO board and foundation roles over three decades, and credits her late mother, a pianist and organist as well as optometrist, for instilling the love of music.
Thomas’ 9-foot Steinway concert grand piano, in a dedicated room in her home, was the perfect instrument for an intimate house concert, in the chamber music style of a 19th century salon. Past MSO executive director Phillip Messner called the piano one of the best in the state, Thomas said, and her mother, upon playing it for the first time, said, “Most pianos are water. This is chocolate.”
As likely the instrument iconic American pianist Van Cliburn played in a Jackson appearance and used by MSO in the distant past, “It has the protoplasmic imprint of some of the greats, and adding to that, world-class pianist Alon Goldstein is truly one of the best in the world.”
“The community coming together to help and assist our getting back on our feet is a wonderful thing,” Shemper said. He noted the multiple churches that reached out to offer their space with messages of “Our house of worship is your house of worship,” condolences and offers of help from city officials and more.
“I feel like Jackson looks at the congregation as part of its history, part of its community,” he said, and the inspiring support gives them strength to rebuild.
“What an incredible, beautiful gesture from the symphony, which is dear to our hearts — Susan (Hart) and mine and many of the Jewish community” said Macy Hart, founder and president emeritus of the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life that was housed at Beth Israel, a longtime MSO patron and a board member in the mid-1980s. “When the symphony made the decision, and Martha said it was a unanimous vote, I just thought, that was a real tzedakah … the highest form of charity in the Jewish faith.”
“The best all of us can do is come together,” MSO Maestro Crafton Beck said, “and support each other in the best way possible.
“The common theme of this whole thing is unity. That’s the resonance. And, what is the centerpiece that brings us together? It’s music, because that bridges everything.”
This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Source: Original Article
