All You Shining Stars Shanan Estreicher & Itamar Borochov

• Shanan Estreicher (1976): All You Shining Stars:
• 1 Estreicher: All You Shining Stars 05:27
• Arrows:
• 2 Estreicher: Arrows 06:32
• Woven:
• 3 Estreicher: Woven 06:49
• Total Runtime 18:48

Info for All You Shining Stars

A new work for improvised trumpet and strings featuring trumpeter Itamar Borochov. Raised in the cosmopolitan port city of Jaffa, now a significant presence on the international jazz scene, Borochov is creating a new musical hybrid – bringing the world sounds of his upbringing to a jazz quartet setting.

Notes by composer Shanan Estreicher: In 2016 I attended a performance of the Itamar Borochov Quartet at the Montreal Jazz Festival. I had always wanted to compose a work for a soloist that involved extended ornamentation and improvisation but never found a musician whose style matched my own musical aesthetic. I knew instantly I had found a kindred artistic spirit in trumpeter, Itamar Borochov. This encounter was the beginning of my musical journey to compose All You Shining Stars for improvised trumpet and strings. ​

My inspiration for this piece came from a beautiful summer evening in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan watching a meteor shower against the brilliant Milky Way. My thoughts instantly turned to Psalm 148 and the line, “Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars.” I decided to compose a three-movement work which would be a meditation on this psalm as well as two others. I was certain Itamar Borochov’s ethereal trumpet playing would fit perfectly with the textures I was hearing. ​

Movement 1 “All You Shining Stars” is based on three musical ideas. The first is a celestial texture in the upper strings representing the praises offered from the heavens in the psalm. The second idea is a gentle but declamatory melody in the trumpet which is freely ornamented. The final idea is chords in the low range of the strings which represent the praises offered from man, the earth, and the sea. ​

Movement 2 “Arrows” is a meditation on Psalm 38. The title comes from the line, “Your arrows have pierced me.” The intention of the music is to reflect the intense pain of the psalmist as he repents to God for his guilt and sin. I reference the Jewish liturgical music of my youth to create the lamenting cantorial melody. The rhythmic pulsing motives in the introduction and middle section represent the arrows piercing the psalmist’s flesh. The cantorial melody is first performed in the trumpet with minimal embellishments and a static accompaniment. The second repetition of the melody is highly ornamented with complex polyrhythmic patterns in the strings.

Movement 3 “Woven”, the tender conclusion to this work, is based on Psalm 139. The psalmist expresses intimate feelings to God when he writes, “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.” This final movement features an extended trumpet solo where Itamar plays freely over a chord progression in the strings. The overall musical texture is based loosely on the polyphony of sacred Renaissance vocal music with the trumpet and five string parts playing independent melodic lines, woven together to create a lush sonority.

Itamar Borochov, trumpet
Shanan Estreicher, conductor
Nicholas Pappone, strings
Jason Mellow, strings
Maria Im, strings
Caroline Cassio Drexler, strings
Daniel Lamas, viola
Molly Aronson, cello
Christopher Johnson, double bass

Itamar Borochov
Raised in the cosmopolitan port city of Jaffa, now resident in New York and a significant presence on the international jazz scene, Borochov is creating a new musical hybrid - bringing the sacred sounds of his upbringing to a jazz quartet setting.

His third release Blue Nights (Laborie Jazz 2019) is a nine-track multi-cultural joyride of enchanting lyricism, exotic motifs, anthemic builds and virtuosic expression.

Borochov first heard Sephardic music in his local synagogue and absorbed these ‘maqams’ (modes) of the greater Middle East and North Africa alongside a range of other musical influences, including the Mizrahi and Ashkenazi musical flavors that are his birthright. He began playing trumpet at the age of eleven and immersed himself in the discovery of jazz, inspired by the jazz trumpet lineage of Louis Armstrong, Clark Terry, Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan, and Booker Little through to Wynton Marsalis, and citing the influence of Ben Webster for his assured yet wistful warm airy tone. In 2007 Borochov relocated to New York to study at the New School and attend Barry Harris’s weekly workshops.

His deep knowledge of these various musical disciplines is expressed organically in his original jazz writing, building a bridge between the near-East and the modal styles of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and others. ​

“This synergetic quest is accomplished with great integrity, demonstrating in-depth knowledge only possible from one who has experienced these traditions firsthand.” – Jazz Magazine ​

Borochov performs on a custom-made Monette 4-valve quarter-tone trumpet which he uses to incorporate Maqams into his playing (the middle-eastern microtonal modes that are the musical language of his traditional upbringing).

In addition to recording three albums as a leader, Borochov also appears on three albums with Yemen Blues, of which he was a founding member, arranger and co-producer. He has toured across four continents and performed at prestigious venues such as Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, SummerStage at Central Park, Blue Note NY, Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, Bimhuis, Flagey and international festivals including Roskilde, Vitoria, Lviv, Montreal & Ottawa Jazz Festivals, London Jazz Festival, Moscow Jazz Festival, Tel Aviv & Red Sea Jazz Festivals, Jazz à Liège & Shanghai World Music Festival. The Itamar Borochov Quartet was chosen to showcase at WOMEX 2019 in Tampere, Finland.

In 2021 Borochov was commissioned by Brazos Valley Symphony, Texas to compose a suite for jazz quartet and string orchestra - 'Emergence', which he first performed with the orchestra in June 2021. He also recorded a new work composed especially for him by Shanan Estreicher - ‘All You Shining Stars’ for improvised trumpet and string septet, which premiered online in February and will be released in May 2023. ​

Borochov won the prestigious 2020 LetterOne 'Rising Stars' Jazz Award European edition, which was presented to him in February 2021 by vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater. He returned to the studio in New York in 2022 with his quartet and Grammy award-winning producer Matt Pierson to record his fourth album, due for release in September 2023.

Shanan Estreicher
is a composer, songwriter, and educator living in New York City. He studied music at the Manhattan School of Music and Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College.

He has composed orchestral, choral, and chamber music, art songs, and music for theater, TV, and film. His compositions have been performed at Carnegie Hall, featured on NBC, Lifetime, and Fox, and can be heard on Composer Concordance Records (Naxos). As a songwriter, he released five albums as a solo artist and with the alt-country group The Brown Trousers. Shanan has collaborated extensively with Grammy Award-winning producer Brian Forbes and received grants from New Music USA and Queens Council on the Arts.

Recent seasons included premieres of All You Shining Stars by the Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra featuring multi-genre trumpeter Itamar Borochov, Songs of Emily Dickinson by Sarah Shafer (Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera) and the Chamber Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall, and various commissions for Composers Concordance and Access Contemporary Music.

This season will include premiere performances of A Concordance of Leaves, a new cantata for choir and baritone soloist with poetry by Philip Metres (Copper Canyon Publishing) by choral director James John, the Queens College Vocal Ensemble, and baritone soloist Andrew Wannigman. Shanan’s string quartet I Laughed So Hard I Cried will be premiered by the Overlook Quartet at Symphony Space in NYC as part of the Relevant Tones podcast series.

As a founding board member of the Chamber Orchestra of New York, Shanan has helped lead the ensemble to international success and acclaim. He served as Co-Artistic Producer for the orchestra’s Naxos recordings of Respighi’s The Birds, Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, and Salvatore Di Vittorio’s Symphonies 3 and 4. Shanan has also designed and launched an educational outreach program called Maestro Juniors for the orchestra which brings live classical music performances to title-one schools in New York City.

One of Shanan’s greatest joys is sharing his passion for music with children. For seventeen years he has taught music at a public school in Queens, NY. The documentary Rise Up and Sing—The Movie chronicles his work with the P.S./I.S. 127 Chorus. He is also the founder and director of the Queens County Choral Festival for elementary and middle school students.

This album contains no booklet.