Victoria Braverman – Tel Aviv Live Music
Facebook just reminded me that it’s a year ago since I went to a wonderful concert at Heichal HaTarbut, also known as the Charles Bronfman Auditorium. The venue is home to the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra but they have occasional concerts of non-classical music and this was one of them. The band was Elai Botner and The Outsider Kids (it sounds better in Hebrew!). Melodic, energetic pop-rock, perfectly suited to a medium sized venue. It was a Friday afternoon concert, very well attended, slightly under-rehearsed but still they gave us value for money and many moments of magic. I remember walking home in the late afternoon sunshine, singing and smiling all the way.
Music venues here vary wildly in size, sound quality, price of admission and indeed the quality of performance. Visiting international artists often play in indoor or outdoor stadia, where the ticket prices make your eyes water. I went to just one in the last year, thanks to the generosity of a very good friend and a well-timed birthday: The Pretenders at Menora Mivtachim Arena, the home of Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team. Chrissie Hynde was, as ever, brilliant, but the sound was poor and the queue management so inept that we missed the start of the set despite arriving early. When they’re charging approximately 10 shekels per minute (a minimum wage worker earns around half a shekel in that time) that’s unforgivable.
The third seated concert I went to, at the Cinematheque, was a late night acoustic concert of a TV star puppet character called Red Band, who usually plays rock with Israeli guest stars. It was as bizarre as it sounds. Rude and raucous, a refreshingly un-PC antithesis to the Women Wage Peace activist Yael Deckelbaum’s gentle gig a couple of weeks later, at the Abraham Hostel.
Of the other gigs I attended in the last year, almost all were free. Tel Aviv is alive with free music, particularly at weekends. It’s an outdoor society, so there are buskers everywhere. A great location to hear some good street musicians is Paamayim cafe on Nahalat Binyamin. There are also loads of concerts and events which feature live music, organised by the municipality or by commercial music promotors, on the various boulevards or recreation areas like the ports, the old Ottoman station or Sarona. I met up with a group of friends in the height of summer in Sarona for some lovely night time latin sounds.
Last weekend I wandered along the coast to Jaffa, where there was a lunchtime event outside the Jaffa theatre held by the embassies of Belgium, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada, Cyprus, Ivory Coast, France, Greece, Democratic Republic of Congo, Romania, Switzerland and Vietnam. Aside from the opportunity to sample food and drink from each of those countries, we were entertained by an excellent afro-beat ensemble called The Groove Ambassadors.
This week I returned to one of my favourite Tel Aviv venues, Beit haAmudim. It’s a hangout for jazz musicians and fans. Very intimate, very casual and a wonderfully warm atmosphere. I was there to see the Arnon Palty Sextet. In the second set I was moved from the back to a seat right at the front. So close to the musicians that I had to duck from time to time to avoid being hit in the face by the trombone. They’re very big instruments, trombones.
We often hear of Tel Aviv being a great holiday destination for beach lovers and foodies. If you love live music it’s pretty special too.
