Jonathan Klein’s Sacred Service Gets a Second Take with Herbie Hancock

Jazz is widely considered America’s most important contribution to the world of music. So it’s hardly any wonder that Jews—who not only acculturated themselves to the American experience but quickly began to shape its soundscape—played a role in jazz’s development and popularization. What’s not as widely known, is that the relationship was symbiotic, with jazz influencing Jewish music, and even going so far as to bring some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time into the most sacred of Jewish music.

One very notable such occasion is explored in a new podcast from the Milken Archive. It was in the 1960s when, through a series of serendipitous events, a teenaged son of a rabbi found himself recording a sacred service of his own composition with some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. The teenager was Jonathan Klein, and his session musicians that day turned out to be drummer Grady Tate, and two members of the Miles Davis Quintet: bassist Ron Carter and pianist Herbie Hancock.

"The old Union Prayer Book, and the way that Ashkenazic Hebrew sounded to me just seemed to flow nicely with jazz." — Jonathan Klein

Unfortunately, Klein’s youth and exuberance may have gotten the better of him at the time and, in his opinion, the resulting recording left much to be desired. Fortunately, America loves a comeback, and with the help of the Milken Archive, Jonathan Klein got a second chance to record and release his Hear O Israel sacred service…and even include some of the original Herbie Hancock performance! Milken Archive curator Jeff Janeczko interviewed Klein about his experience with (and the storied history behind) this unique work.

Find out how it all came together in the podcast: Jonathan Klein's Hear O Israel: Herbie Hancock's maiden voyage with Jewish Music Now streaming on SoundCloud