Magnified & Sanctified: The Music of Jewish Prayer
As anyone who has been involved in organising or running a conference will know, the period leading up to the arrival of your delegates can be an anxious and stressful time. As Project Manager for Performing the Jewish Archive and a member of the Magnified & Sanctified Conference Committee I was no exception to this and it is fair to say I approached June with some trepidation, worrying about last minutes arrangements and hoping that our delegates would find the conference programme engaging, exciting and stimulating!
The four day programme (presented jointly by the School of Music, University of Leeds and the Academic Wing of the European Cantors Association) ran from the 16 – 19 June in the School of Music at the University of Leeds and was the first time in Britain an International Academic Conference had been devoted to the music of Jewish prayer. The timetable was certainly jam-packed with a mixture of keynote lectures, 40 conference papers, roundtable discussions, concerts, an opening reception, a conference dinner and a historical walking tour of Leeds, all of which kept delegates busy from early in the morning until late at night.
We were delighted to welcome Professors Mark Kligman, Eliyahu Schleifer and Jeffrey Summit as the keynote speakers. Their breadth of knowledge, insight and engagement greatly benefitted the conference programme and helped create a wonderfully collegiate and participatory atmosphere.
Click here to see the Clothworkers Consort's concert and Eliyahu Schleifer's public lecture
It was also our great pleasure to welcome Cantor Mimi Sheffer who impressed delegates with her performances both during the choral concert on Wednesday evening and in Eliyahu Schleifer’s keynote lecture on Thursday. The Wednesday night concert by the Clothworkers Consort of Leeds was a highlight noted by many delegates. Stephen Muir (Principal Investigator for Performing the Jewish Archive) and I are members of the choir and we were both delighted to be able to participate in the conference in this way.
In addition, Dr Stephen Muir, Dr Simo Muir (Post-Doctoral Research Fellow) and Dr Lisa Peschel (Co-Investigator) all presented conference papers, chaired sessions and participated in roundtable panels so the PtJA team were certainly kept busy! All in all, it was a wonderful four days and I know I can safety speak for my colleagues when I say we were overwhelmed by the warmth and friendliness of the delegates and their engagement with and contribution to the programme. The atmosphere in the School of Music was buzzing from morning till night and whilst ready for a rest when the conference was over, we all missed the buzz in the School the following week. Here are just a few comments from our delegates….
“Fantastic! Stimulating, original thinking, high level of scholarship and performance calibre hugely professional”
“This was a very good experience, enriching, educating, informative and socially pleasant….The organization and attention to details in organization was superb”
“This has been an extraordinary learning experience and has opened up several new interdisciplinary connections for my work”
By Libby Clark
Project Manager
Performing the Jewish Archive