Teens record Mendelssohn on phones after virus cancels gig

When his students’ spring concert was canceled because of the coronavirus, a teacher at the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts in Givatayim decided to get creative.

Yishai Steckler, a conductor who teaches at Thelma Yellin and was once a student there himself, asked all the students in the choir and orchestra to record themselves singing and playing their parts in the central part of the concert, Psalm 42 by Felix Mendelssohn.

(It was, wrote Steckler, the same piece that was canceled when he was a student at Thelma Yellin during the 1991 Gulf War.)

“This is the result of the recording of 100 fantastic kids and 100 smartphones,” wrote Steckler on Facebook.

He thanked everyone involved in creating the more than five-minute-long recording, including the orchestra conductor, one of the 12th grade students who handled the production, a friend who edited the sound of the 100 phones, and Yaron Aldema, an adult friend who put the project together.

Steckler completed his post with wishes to meet soon during happier times, with full health, sufficient income, and much good, live music.

A few days earlier, the Jerusalem Street Orchestra, a local chamber music orchestra that aims to make classical music accessible to new audiences, got together virtually to play Mozart from their separately isolated spaces.