Project ben David - the music of Arnie Davidson
In late 2009, Arnie completed work on his second CD, blending music from Jewish liturgy, themes echoed from Jewish teaching and contemporary English music that just approaches everyday life through Arnie's unique lens as worship leader, singer and songwriter. Titled "Into the Light", it challenges the senses with vibrant music and gives pause to reset our compass by embracing timeless wisdom in daily living.
In 2008, Arnie released music that has now become classic on his CD "Project ben David",(PBD). Produced by award winning singer/songwriter Beth Schafer, and including the voices of some of the best known artists in contemporary Jewish music, such as Julie Silver, Josh Nelson, and Peri Smilow, PBD applies the strength of Arnie's songwriting to revisit and forever revitalize the Shabbat (Sabbath) service.
Arnie began writing Jewish music at summer camp long ago, and he returned to composing prayer-based music to honor the occasion of his son's Bar Mitzvah in 2000. "I am excited about the power of contemporary Jewish music to reveal the meaning locked in Hebrew prayer, which is inaccessible to many because they lack skills in Hebrew." Following the Bar Mitzvah, his congregation in Glastonbury, CT embraced his music as their own in their weekly worship and requested more.
Modeled after Debbie Friedman's "Mi Shebeirach" prayer for healing, which combines Hebrew chorus lyrics from the prayer with an interpretive translation, Arnie set out to study Shabbat prayers and to find modern meaning in them with memorable contemporary music.
"Jewish prayer-based music was stuck in a rut, and there was resistance and cantorial in-fighting between preserving the 'Chazanut' (historical cantorial melodies) and singing the lighter, emerging contemporary liturgical music of songwriters such as Debbie Friedman, Jeff Klepper and Julie Silver."
"Like it or not, we live in an age where the future of our people, our youth, are plugged into sophisticated, well produced music, and their ears are tuned to critically filter out the substandard, even if it is just poorly produced. Compared to the evolution of Christian rock since the 1970s, contemporary Jewish music has been stalled out until about 10 years ago. It is time that we listen to contemporary Jewish music on our iPods, shuffled along with our favorite songwriters, without apology, without wincing", says Arnie.
During 2009, Arnie has been busy teaching workshop sessions at synagogues, MANAJE, and Limmud UK in "Discovering the Music in Prayer". He works with attendees to study our traditional prayer, and to interpret and discover ways that it might shed timeless wisdom and light on new situations. The song "Sim Shalom" is a perfect example of this (listen to a sample in the MUSIC section of this site), blending the original prayer text (Grant us Peace) with interpretations gleaned from a Limmud UK workshop session.
Arnie was a founding member and keyboardist in the synagogue band, The Friday Night Music Project, which brought its fully produced, live rock Shabbat to synagogues in the Northeast US for nearly a decade.
In 2009, Arnie became involved as worship leader with the monthly music worship group, Shir Hamakom (SHM), in the Hartford, Connecticut area. "SHM is a music laboratory, exploring music as a vehicle to make traditional Jewish liturgy step forward and illuminate moments of our everyday lives", states Arnie. (shirhamakom.com)
"There is timeless wisdom in Torah and in our prayers that have been confined to the sanctuary for too long. It is time to expose worshipers to the beauty and insight of our tradition, and music can be an important part of that mission." Arnie's music and perspective are important forces in shaping the direction of Jewish worship. Listen to the music of PBD and Into the Light to see for yourself.