专辑简介

Pirke Avot – Sayings of the Fathers (also known as Ethics of the Fathers or Ethics of the Sages) is perhaps the most widely known and quoted of the sixty-three tractates of the Mishna, the code of laws governing Jewish life. It consists largely of the favorite sayings, maxims, and aphorisms of some sixty Rabbis who lived and taught in the period from around 300 B.C.E to 200 C.E., and is almost entirely concerned with moral conduct. It is, in many ways, a self-help manual for living a righteous life.

Jazz composer and educator Mark Kross has taken several of the more global, ecumenical passages of the Pirke Avot and woven them into a fourteen-movement cantata for jazz ensemble, chorus, and vocal soloists. Just as the sayings reflect different aspects of a righteous life, the movements reflect different styles of jazz, from swing to funk to samba to ballad and even to gospel! The piece was composed for and premiered in 2008 at the Middlesex School, in Concord, MA, where Mark Kross was the Head of the Music Department.