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Biographies |
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Vivienne
Bellos
The head researcher is Vivienne Bellos LRAM ARCM. She was educated
at the Royal Academy of Music and has been Director of Music, conductor
and soloist at the North Western Reform Synagogue since 1980. She
was music consultant to the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain from
1986 - 1999 and is currently a consultant to the Jewish Music Institute.
She has a wealth of knowledge of Jewish music and of the progressive
Jewish community in Britain. She is also the Founder and Musical
Director of the Jewish Youth Choir and was conductor of the Zemel
Choir from 1999 - 2003.
Vivienne Bellos was awarded the Lady Hilary Groves Prize 2007 for an outstanding contribution to music in the community.
Vicky Joseph
Vicky Joseph is the manager of the Reflections project. She is an experienced project manager and well acquainted with the Jewish community, having run the Reform Synagogue movement’s social action department for fifteen years and having co-founded both ‘The Noah Project’ Jewish environmental group and ‘Jonah’, a UK Jewish anti-nuclear group. As well as the Reflections Project she is currently managing ‘Connections - Hidden British Histories’, a project about Asian, Black and Jewish immigrants in Britain. Vicky will be taking charge of the day-to-day management and administration of the Reflections project and will work specifically on editing the oral histories.
Members of the Advisory Group
Alexander Knapp MA,
MusB, PhD (Cantab), HonARAM, ARCM
Alexander Knapp is a graduate of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and
recipient of a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship to study
ethnomusicology in North America - with special reference to Jewish
music. Over a period of more than 35 years, he has published and
lectured on this subject in the UK, Ireland, Holland, Sweden, Germany,
Switzerland, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Israel, USA, Russia, and
China.
As well as composing, arranging, conducting, broadcasting, and performing
as pianist in the UK, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Russia and USA,
Alexander Knapp has been involved as consultant and accompanist
to cantors and choirs on several commercial recordings of Jewish
music. His set of Four Sephardi Songs (arranged for voice and piano)
was published in New York in 1992; and his Elegy for String Orchestra
was published in Jerusalem in 1997.
He has been appointed to academic and administrative posts in London
(Goldsmiths’ College, Royal College of Music, City University)
and Cambridge (Wolfson College). At present he holds the Joe Loss
Lectureship in Jewish Music at the University of London School of
Oriental and African Studies (funded in part by the Jewish Music
Institute).
In 1998, his anthology of essays on Jewish music was published in
Chinese by the Music Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of
Arts in Beijing under the title Youtai Yinyue Lunwenji. Recent articles
include entries on aspects of Jewish music in The New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians (second edition). Current projects include
the modification and publication of his PhD thesis on ‘The
Jewish Cycle’ of the Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch.
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Geraldine Auerbach MBE
Geraldine Auerbach MBE is the Director of Jewish Music Institute
(JMI) now based at SOAS, University of London, bringing Jewish music
to the mainstream of British academic and cultural life.
She is the founder-director of the London International Jewish Music
Festival, a biennial month-long Festival in London’s prime
concert halls that took place from 1984 - 2000. This Festival presented
music and arts of significance to the Jewish people throughout the
ages and across the globe. There have been many commissions and
first performances in the UK. She directs a one-day themed Jewish
Culture Day at the South Bank each November.
Geraldine has helped create and promotes many new performing bands
and choirs and has introduced into this country, artists from around
the world. Special events she devised have included a Jewish memorial
oratorio in Canterbury Cathedral in 1986, a Rothschild Soiree at
the family’s stately homes in the 80s and 90s, a whole weekend
commemorating the 800th anniversary of the infamous massacre of
Jews in York in 1990 and Yehudi Menuhin conducting Ernest Bloch’s
Hebrew Sacred Service in St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1995.
As Director of the Jewish Music Institute, she has developed wide-ranging
programmes in education, performance and information and collaborations
with other arts and educational organisations across Britain and
Europe.
Working closely with the Department of Music at SOAS, she and JMI
have established and run International Conferences in Jewish Music;
Music suppressed in the Third Reich and the Fiddle in Traditional
Cultures. They have initiated a Summer programme wit week-long courses
in choral and cantorial music as well as Yiddish language and song
and klezmer music and dance. She
has inspired a large-scale World Music Summer School including these
courses at SOAS.
She helped establish the first Jewish music library in 2003 with
scores, printed books and recorded Jewish music from all over the
world including special collections of British interest. A special
database has been devised and the materials are accessible online
at the JMI Website www.jmi.org.uk
Since the Jewish Music Institute has been based at London University,
with Geraldine at the helm, special International Forums have been
established with experts in the fields, to focus research and attention
on specific areas such as Suppressed Music, Yiddish Culture, Arab-Jewish
Dialogue through Music and the Music of Israel. The Jewish Music
Institute is now involved with projects to introduce Jewish music
to primary and secondary schools and to expand Jewish music activities
to the North West, particularly Liverpool.
Geraldine’s horizons encompass all forms of Jewish culture
and she is the convenor of Jewish Culture UK - an association of
all the major Jewish Culture providers (and many minor ones) in
the UK. These Institutions, including the Jewish Museum, the Ben
Uri Art Gallery, The Spiro Ark, the Jewish Music Institute and the
London Jewish Cultural Centre have been meeting since December 2001
recognizing that the vibrancy of contemporary Jewish culture and
that the growing interest in cultural production on Jewish themes,
necessitate a strategic approach and a professional network for
the sharing of expertise, marketing and promotion opportunities
and the raising of funds. See the website www.jewishculture.org.uk
for more information.
As the Jewish Community is celebrating the 350th anniversary of
Jewish life in Britain, it is Geraldine’s fervent aim to see
that Jewish cultural institutions are recognised, valued and funded,
by individuals, by the Jewish Community and by the British Government
as part of Britain’s great Cultural Diversity.
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Simon Appleman
Simon Appleman is Head of Music at JFS. In a thriving department
the school offers a range of curricular and extra-curricular activities
with a large number of students taking instrument lessons in school.
Under Simon’s direction the School choirs have performed at
the Queen Elizabeth Hall, St John Smith’s Square and the London
Assembly. Simon has previously taught in Bexley and Enfield and
has a range of experiences working with young people of all abilities.
Simon achieved a BA Hons in Music at the University of East Anglia
before completing a PGCE course at Reading University. Subsequently
he achieved a Masters degree in Music Education at the Institute
of Education.
In addition to his teaching work Simon is the co-ordinator of the
Network of Jewish Youth Choirs (UK), conductor of the Woodside Park
Synagogue Choir and a brass tutor with the National Children’s
Wind Orchestras of Great Britain.
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