Noa's concert in Evanston (USA)

Israeli Singer Noa Hasn't Forgotten Her Bronx Roots
Culture Crossover ARTS WATCH. Music review.

The Bronx-raised Israeli singer Noa makes music balanced between East and West, traditional and modern, reverence and razzle-dazzle.

These competing and occasionally conflicting qualities were evident Monday evening at Northwestern University's Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, as Noa performed for a near-capacity crowd of almost one thousand that ranged in age from undergraduates to gray-haired audience members old enough to be their grandparents.

Born Achinoam Nini, Noa emigrated from the U.S. when she was 17 and has embraced the music of her homeland. On "Mishaela" and "Pines," she set beautifully wafting Middle Eastern melodies to the Hebrew lyrics of songwriting partner Gil Dor and Israeli poet Leah Goldberg, caressing them with her gentle, crystalline soprano.

Noa also drew on her family's roots in the sub-Saudi Arabian nation of Yemen on "Uma," her most stunning vocal turn of the evening. Singing a capella in Yemen, her open palm beating time on her breastbone, she unleashed towering melodic lines in a keening, vibrato-rich timbre.

Although Noa's English-language material incorporated elements of Middle Eastern music, it leaned more toward an amalgam of light jazz and acoustic pop balladry. Occasionally playing electric guitar or percussion, Noa and her band--acoustic guitarist Dor, percussionist Zohar Fresco and bassist Nir Graff--crafted impeccably elegant settings for bright melodies that turned and bent on themselves.

"I Don't Know" recalled Anita Baker's brand of quiet storm, while the acoustic dance groove, shifting melody lines and intimate vocal of "By the Light of the Moon" suggested the singer has spent time listening to recent Joni Mitchell records.

Noa's enthusiasms also extend to classic musicals, which she acknowledged by wordlessly incorporating the chorus of "Maria" from "West Side Story," into an otherwise too-long instrumental duet with Dor. This influence was evident as well in her penchant for dramatic vocal crescendos that would do Barbara Streisand proud, but too often seemed like self-indulgent showboating.

At various points during her 20-song performance, Noa tried to merge these different styles into a whole. "Manhattan-Tel Aviv" intriguingly contrasted her past and present homes, shifting between streetwise verses, martial choruses, and Middle Eastern interludes like a Broadway number.

Other attempts, like the rock-flavored "He," lacked both the emotional richness of her Mid-Eastern-rooted material and melodic buoyancy of her Western-based pop. While Noa understandably tried to integrate the divergent aspects of her life and art, she was at her best when she let them exist separately, side-by-side.

June 05, 1996|By Kevin McKeough. Special to the Tribune.