JEWISH MUSIC
As a child Jeanne was exposed to the great traditional richness of Jewish liturgical music. Her father who had a glorious Tenor voice sang in the Synagogue Choir for over fifty years. Her brother, Malcolm was the choirmaster of the Sydenham Shul Choir for over 20 years.
At a very early age Jeanne composed and arranged songs for various Jewish celebrations such as “Yom Ha’atzmaut” (Independence Day - Israel) and other Jewish and Israeli stage productions.
For over twenty years Prof Zaidel-Rudolph was the resident composer, arranger and organist for the Sydenham Highlands North Synagogue Choir, one of the best known male choirs of its kind in the world. She has worked with many different Cantors (Chazonim) but most particularly with Oshy Tugendhaft.
In 1981 she had the privilege of having a private audience with The Lubavicher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson o.b.m. He gave her a special blessing to continue composing music to give great joy to the world and to extend her talents to benefit the Jewish Community.
Whenever the American Jewish soul singers Mordechai Ben David and Avraham Fried visited South Africa, she would compose and arrange much of the music required for their supporting programmes, and has been the pianist/conductor for many of the performances.
In November 1989 the “Songs of David” – “Hallel” was launched as a cassette tape and subsequently as CDof beautiful musical settings of the Psalms with superb and heavenly orchestral and choral arrangements by Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph.
In 1993 she dedicated herself to composing and arranging traditional Jewish music and songs which culminated in “THE TRIUMPH OF A NATION CELEBRATION” with four nights of a highly successful stage production and magnificent studio CD recording. This spawned a series of Celebration shows over the next fifteen years and several CDs of different Celebration shows have been produced.
In recent years Biblical Themes and the Spiritual World of Religious Jewish Mysticism and the Kabbalah have been a powerful source of inspiration for many of Jeanne’s “classical” art music compositions such as FOUR MINIM, MASADA, VIRTUOSO 1, AT THE END OF THE RAINBOWand SEFIROT SYMPHONY
In April 1995, Jeanne was invited to give a lecture on 'Jewish Music in South Africa', which she presented on the 10th April as part of the Youngstown State University Music Festival (Ohio, USA). She frequently lectures on Jewish music locally and supervised a Masters thesis on Klezmer Music for Nikki Richard, who obtained a distinction for the degree.
Annual tours to the USA and Canada have taken place since March 2000 to 2007 and to London (March 2003, Royal Festival Hall), as well as the debut appearance in November 2008 to Australia with the Stage Musical 'Celebration' - a multi-media extravaganza encapsulating in music, the essence of Jewish history. All music for this production was composed and arranged by Jeanne.