It’s funny, where life takes you. I started out in my teens as a folk singer. Later on I wrote love ballads for pop charts. Mostly, throughout my life, I’ve written and sung love songs, songs of unrequieted love, lost love, sad love. Later on, after years of acting, directing and writing, I became a teacher of Torah and Jewish mysticism. Two years ago I embarked on a project called Soul On Fire that was to change my life in many ways. This Theatrical-musical adventure was based heavily on harmonic vocals and required me to write for multiple voices in ways I hadn’t dealt with before. The music was primarily spiritual and soulful, which led me to explore liturgy more and more as a composer. The result has been a stream of liturgical music that has taken over my life as a writer. It’s all I’ve been doing for the past two years.

Here is an offering of my liturgical music, some of it commissioned for synagogue use, some written out of sheer necessity of the soul. I am endlessly grateful to all the singers, the friends, with whom I have been working for the past two years on Soul On Fire. They have inspired me and pushed me to write from the heart, expecting better, more challenging material as time went on. Mostly, however, I owe it all to my family; my sweet wife and children who pay the daily price of living with a possessed soul. For all the nights I have been absent, for all the days, weeks, months of seclusion in my work room, in the studio, away at concerts - this Labor Of Love - Avoda Sh’balev - is theirs. May it be acceptable.