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 20^th C. composers Zoltan Kodaly (Hungary), Jewish composer, Ernest Bloch, and 17^th C. master, Heinrich Schutz “composer of the Bible,” he draws upon similar ethnic and spiritual influences in forging a world of musical expression.