Maccabeats: Video draws music from Les Mis for Pesach story

As each Jewish holiday approaches, music fans search the Internet in anticipation wondering: will the Maccabeats produce a new song for this upcoming chag?

They’ve targeted Chanukah and Rosh Hashanah and Purim, and sort of spoofed Sukkot, but now they’ve taken on Pesach, seeing a connection between the words and music of Les Miserables and the story of Passover.

“Les Mis had been on our minds for the past few months because of the recent Oscar-winning film adaptation, and we knew that its music was something we loved to sing,” noted Julian Horowitz, the Maccabeats’ current director and a bass singer with the group. “I had listened through the soundtrack several times, and then it hit me that the two stories shared so many elements when I heard the line ‘the music of a people who will not be slaves again.’ From there, I went through the entire play and culled selections that matched up with the Pesach story. There were actually a whole lot more thematic overlaps than I initially realized, so the project turned into a six-song medley. “

The new video lasts 5:40 minutes and melds six songs seamlessly. Though overall a more serious tone than some of their earlier work, it presents visual midrashic references and comic asides. The music, well known from the long running show and now the movie, is stirring, especially when applied to the Pesach story, itself an amazing story.

The production took several weeks, but they shot the video, in YU’s Lamport Auditorium, in one night over ten hours, he explained. Uri Westrich and his team at Drive-In Productions gathered the sets, props, costumes and lights and put together the storyboard. “We enlisted some of the best a cappella producers in the business to help us put together the track,” wrote Horowitz in an email, “for example, the arrangement was by Deke Sharon, vocal producer for the TV show the Sing-Off.” He said that the words are almost verbatim from the musical.

Three young men who served as a running “comic relief” theme in previous videos, three times as Greeks, have now morphed into Egyptians. “They’re actually three really great, talented, guys who have been helping out from the beginning,” Horowitz explained. “This is the first time that their actual voices are on the track, they are actually pretty good singers as well. “

The Maccabeats have multiple reasons for producing these music videos, said Horowitz “but when we hear people tell us that they were inspired or educated by our music, that’s really what keeps us going. I think part of our appeal is that we don’t shove anything in anybody’s face, but in many ways our Judaism is what drives us to do what we do.” These projects are fun and hard work, but are “very rewarding, both in terms of our impact on the world and in terms of personal creative satisfaction.”

Most of the Maccabeats are alumni of YU and are now in graduate schools for law, psychology, medicine, architecture, marketing, in biology research, or YU’s semicha program. They held tryouts this year and accepted two new members, both undergraduates at YU. “We hope to continue our strong connection with YU going forward,” he said.

Horowitz noted that their next project will be “very different from anything we’ve done so far. Not a holiday parody, but still educational and fun.” The video can be seen on their website www.maccabeats.com