Roving With The Arts: with Mick Hesse Featuring Max Stern

American-born composer Max Stern, following the call of Abraham, Unto thy seed will I give this land (Gn. 12:7), departed for the Promised Land (1976). On Mt. Zion he encountered one of the 36 lamed-vav tzaddikim (holy righteous men), who contain a spark of the Divine light and who inspired him to compose works drawn from Biblical sources. Encouraged by the Yemenite community of Jerusalem (1976-1979) and befriended by Moroccan neighbors and other Jewish communities in Yeroham and Beersheba (1979-2017), he embraced their folklore as his own. Like 20th C. composers Zoltan Kodaly (Hungary), Jewish composer, Ernest Bloch, and 17th C. master, Heinrich Schutz “composer of the Bible,” he draws upon similar ethnic and spiritual influences in forging a world of musical expression.