Modern public life is saturated with references to ancient religious text, from politicians who cite verse to appeal to an observant base to earnest believers who frame contemporary events in the context of centuries old stories. Depending on one’s own relationship to religion, the ubiquity of scripture will register as welcome or invasive. Less frequently, we are given the time and space to contemplate a living relationship with these texts. How do they fit in with modern life (if at all)? How can we reconcile with their problematic content, and if we can’t, can we make peace with their components that possess enduring value? In a cultural moment where we are grappling with and reevaluating historical trajectories, the profound impact of ancient religious texts on modern cultures looms large. In line with a millenia old tradition of questioning and reinterpreting ancient texts for modern times, Lainie Fefferman has been grappling with her relationship to the Hebrew Bible through her music for decades. Here I Am is a document of that intellectual and emotional work, fifteen years in the making.

Fefferman makes different decisions about how to set these texts that both reflect their weight and timeless impact as well as her complex and varied relationship to each biblical excerpt's content. Fefferman’s choice to feature five different vocalists over the course of the work supports its Biblical scope, with its large cast of characters over generations and centuries. Using a chamber rock instrumentation allows Fefferman the freshness to frame the musical material as a contemporary response, establishing two layers of interpretation: that of the original words, and that of her reaction to and journey with them.

From composer Lainie Fefferman:

“I’ve been working on "Here I Am" for fifteen years and every time I think about it, I come at its purpose and placement in my life from a slightly different perspective.

I began in 2009 by writing  “And Their Bloodguilt Shall Be Upon Them.” I was hearing so many politicians in the news quote verses from the Hebrew Bible Book of Leviticus as their guide for defining what should or should not be a legal marriage. I lost my cool on that one. “HAVE YOU READ LEVITICUS?!?” was something I routinely yelled at the screen (I still got news from cable TV at that point). Half my life as a modern American Jew was in violation of the laws laid down by Leviticus: I ate shellfish and bacon; I didn’t isolate when I menstruated; I routinely wore wool and linen together in the same outfit. Politicians didn’t seem to invoke chapter and verse for my heinously blaspheming sweater choices. I decided I wanted to meditate on the weird and wild emotional places I’m sent by reading the Book of Leviticus. This is my musical “midrash” – a Jewish practice of interpreting and retelling and embellishing existing biblical texts to illuminate a contemporary context and point of view. I hoped then and hope now that my midrash might spark richer conversations about the place ancient texts have in our lives – to show that being critical of a text and digging in hard is part of what I see as loving the tradition that was born of this text in the first place!

Soon after, I decided to make a piece that tours all of the emotional places the Torah sends me. My delightful husband Jascha Narveson puts it best: Jewishness is my “received identity.” I grew up in a home where Jewish-American / Ashkenazi-American culture was offered readily and proudly as a touchstone for figuring out my place in the world. To my mind, the Torah is part of that identity in ways both overt and nearly indiscernible… but I know it’s in there. It’s cooked in there. My pluck, my shame, my curiosity, my rage, my love – I can’t help wondering how the millennia-old contemplation of the characters and stories from the Hebrew Bible started some of the threads that led me to who I am in 2024. I hope this album might inspire you to wonder with me.”

From Dan Lippel:

The album begins with the spoken “Intro”, reading census text from Torah listing the twelve tribes of Israel, and establishes an ambiguously liturgical atmosphere of the work. That atmosphere is swiftly broken by “Lot’s Daughters”, a driving setting of a story concerning questions of what we owe each other featuring Fefferman’s own gravelly vocals. The influence of progressive art rock is felt throughout, evoking the theatricality of the early work of Genesis and Pink Floyd. A high register sustain in the violin elides into the opening of “Nephilim,” which features soprano Charlotte Mundy’s crystalline voice over an ethereal, luminous accompaniment to meditate on the role of these angels barely mentioned, whose role is seemingly only to have sex with human women. Fefferman animates the static, modal ensemble sound world with light arpeggiation in the piano, and atmospheric effects in the percussion.

“Offerings” features a vocal trio that functions as a sort of Greek Chorus throughout the work (Martha Cluver, Mellissa Hughes, and Caroline Shaw). They open in chant-like homophony, before splitting into rhythmically independent parts that retain a quality of ritual and prayerfulness as they recount the taxation to the temple that defined Israelite identity for centuries. "Deuteronomic Rules" uses Fefferman's dry reading tone to highlight a few rules from the Book of Deuteronomy that present a stark and startling dissonance with modern life and values. A steady pulse on the hi-hat propels “Sword on Thigh” forward, with hits between the anvil and distorted electric guitar punctuating Meaghan Burke’s earthy vocals as she chronicles a bloody civil war as the Jews build a new life after slavery in Egypt. “Innocent Men” is scored once again for the vocal trio, who articulate folkloric mixed meter material with clapping and stomping outlining Abraham's bargain with God as he worked to save the people of Sodom.

The proportions of Here I Am shift for its final three tracks, as the eighth and tenth tracks are both much longer than any of the prior movements. “And Their Bloodguilt Shall Be Upon Them” opens with ferocity, as the ensemble plays massive, insistent chords under a modular, ascending line passed through the ensemble that is steadily displaced and varied rhythmically. Mellissa Hughes is the vocal soloist here, delivering the texts in various guises, sometimes over percolating sustains, sometimes in dialogue with dramatic attacks and moto perpetuo figures in the ensemble.

For a climactic passage admonishing readers not to “uncover the nakedness” of various relations, the score turns to dramatic, melismatic lines in the layered, overdubbed vocal line as a bass drum forcefully underpins a long scalar build in the ensemble. Fefferman chooses to confront one of the most problematic passages head on; we hear the prohibition against “lying with a man as one does with a woman” with sudden, stark transparency of orchestration, with Hughes solo spoken voice over cymbal rolls and a pedal point in the piano. The intensity builds again, culminating in Hughes’ proclamation “I am the Lord your God!,” revealing the crashing sustain of overdriven guitar and disembodied, unstable ponticello tones in the strings. The text returns to the litany of prohibitions over whispers in the ensemble and ominous anvil strikes. The calamitous opening texture reappears for a final recitation of some of the harshest pronouncements. The vocal trio makes its final appearance in “Lineage”, returning to the listing of the twelve tribes from the opening movement, this time sung as a responsive duo.

“Take Your Son” opens with effervescent glissandi harmonics passed around in the strings and inside of the piano, and Hughes enters with a kind of cantus firmus over the developing sonic ecosystem. The story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac is told in plain speech, as Tanning’s violin holds a high tone and Levine plays ethereal harmonics. As Hughes shifts into singing the text, the instruments in the ensemble become more active in brief soloistic moments; a flourish from Sara Budde’s clarinet and a splash of color from the guitar. Ashley Bathgate’s cello establishes a repeating figure to accompany, “Take your son, your only son.” The piece ends, once again, with the recitation of the numbers of the twelve tribes, here supported by a glistening accompaniment, closing as it began, an assertion of the cyclical, timeless nature of ancient texts and the power of inherited identity.

– Dan Lippel