Kedmah

Kedmah: A Concert of Traditional Mizrahi Melodies Reimagined

Kedmah is a musical ensemble excavating the power and beauty of Middle Eastern Jewish expression through piyyutim. These ancient poems and songs have infused spirit and meaning into both sacred and ordinary moments of human experience for generations. Kedmah honors and reinvents these melodies, rendered with deep reverence for tradition and boldly adapted with an ear towards our modern musical world. The ensemble is co-led by vocalist R’ Yosef Goldman and multi-instrumentalist Yoni Avi Battat, and joined by vocalists R’ Jessica Kate Meyer and Anat Halevy Hochberg, percussionist Fabio Pirozzolo, and bassist James Heazlewood Dale.

Schedule

• 6:30 - 7:15 Pre Concert Lecture / Text Study with Rabbi Yosef Goldman Sponsored by Hadar Boston

• 7:30-9:30 Performance

Co-sponsored by Hebrew College - Soul Sounds, Hadar Boston, Temple Beth Zion, and Base Boston.

This program is supported in part by a grant from Cambridge Arts, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.

Pre-concert lecture / text study with Rabbi Yosef Goldman

Singing Toward Freedom: Unlocking a Pesach Piyyut

Piyyut is a spiritual technology—poetry written to be sung, designed to do something that study alone cannot. Join Rabbi Yosef Goldman to explore Melekh Go’el u-Moshia’, a beloved Baghdadi piyyut sung from Purim through the Seder night. We’ll unpack how the poet artfully weaves together Exodus, Ezekiel, and the Mekhilta, situating us inside the story of liberation and the pivot from embodied memory to preparing for the liberation ahead. This is the perfect preparation for Nisan, the head of months: the season of first and final redemption.