“Witnesses to memory, 30 years old”: Alejandro Lerner and a heartfelt tribute to the victims of the attack on the Israeli Embassy

As part of the activities to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, on March 17, 1992, the diplomatic headquarters held the event Witnesses of Memory, 30 years at the Teatro Colón, where musician Alejandro Lerner performed live “A Day Like Any Day”, which specially composed to recall the fateful date, the 29 victims and the survivors. Then, the Academic Orchestra of the Teatro Colón performed a tribute with a special program.

Before playing the song alone on the piano on the stage of the legendary Buenos Aires theater, Lerner said that writing it was “a very difficult task” because it involved “documenting, from the perspective of an Argentine and Jewish artist, what it feels like about what happened thirty years ago and how to make it a testimony that keeps the search for the responsible and that what happened will never happen again.” “It is memory that keeps the memory alive and the need for justice to do its job,” he added.

In El Colón, what was stripped of his interpretation made the request for the clarification of the attack, which after 30 years he has not yet been responsible, sound even louder. His refrain says: “Freedom, where are you? There are many of us hoping that one day it will come true, that the light of justice will bring us closer to the truth.”

As for his composition, the musician, who will start a tour of Argentina, Europe and Israel on April 8, explained: “It took a while before I realized at one point that the song had to do with a ticking of the clock, that it was going slow and that, suddenly, in an instant of a day like any day, it was going to change the lives of those who were there and that of all of us.” “I couldn't stop doing it from a human point of view,” he admitted of the proposal that came to him from the Embassy to write it.

“A day like any day” is the first song published by the composer of “Todo a lungungo” since “Puro sentimiento”, a collaboration with guitarist Carlos Santana that came out last year, and was released yesterday hours before the central event. Lerner was also in charge of the arrangements, musical direction and mixing. His wife, Marcela Lerner, and the Argentine Israeli singer Pablo Rosenberg accompany him on vocals. The artist, born in Rosario, emigrated with his family to Israel when he was 6 years old and developed a musical career of more than 30 years, first with a band called Stella Maris and then as a soloist.

On piano and keyboards, he was accompanied by Idan Raichel, leader of The Idan Raichel Project, a band that fuses jazz/electronic/world music, as Sephardic and Ethiopian rhythms. He is currently one of the most recognized Israeli artists in the world and visited Argentina twice. In fact, last year he released an album with his greatest hits in the symphonic version recorded live in Buenos Aires with the Symphonic Ensemble 21 during the shows he gave in 2018 at the Teatro Coliseo.

Witnesses of Memory, 30 years old opened with the words of the Minister of Culture of the City of Buenos Aires, Enrique Avogadro, who stressed the importance of strengthening memory in society, referring to the audiovisual piece that the Embassy produced as pedagogical material for secondary schools throughout the country.

Then spoke were Israel's Ambassador to Argentina, Galit Ronen, who called for further strengthening ties between the two countries and called for peace and justice, and Israel's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice, Gideon Sa'ar, who heads the Israeli delegation that came to the commemoration. The official remarked that the attack was a tragic event for both nations.

The program continued with a flashmob organized by the Colón Choir, whose members started singing from different parts of the theater, mixed with the audience. Under the direction of Sergio Feferovich, the theme chosen was the classic “Like the cicada” by Maria Elena Walsh.

As Ronen put it, the event was intended as an intimate occasion for the victims' families to have a moment to remember their loved ones. In fact, there were some tributes on stage, such as that of Martín Goldberg, a survivor of the attack on the Embassy, who performed with the liturgical singer Oscar Fleischer “Shema Israel”, one of the most popular songs by Israel's most important artist, Sarit Hadad.

The closing was carried out by the Academic Orchestra of the Teatro Colón, which, led by Ezequiel Silberstein, made a special selection of four pieces. He opened with “Elegy”, a composition that the Englishman Edward Elgar wrote in 1909 to remember the deceased members of the Worshipful Company of Musicians in London. It is a tribute to those who are no longer there. He then continued with “The Meditation”, an intermezzo of Jules Massenet's opera Thaïs, which included a violin solo.

The third work chosen was the adage for cello and orchestra of Max Bruch's “Kol Nidrei”. The composition of the German master is inspired by traditional Jewish songs and owes its title to one of the most important prayers recited at the beginning of the religious service on Yom Kippur. At the end, the Overture “La grotto de Fingal” by Felix Mendelssohn sounded and then ended with the Argentine National Anthem and the “Hatikva”, the national anthem of Israel.

In addition to Witnesses of Memory, 30 Years Old and the main event, which took place yesterday at 14.50 in the dry square of Arroyo Street where the Embassy building was located, the diplomatic headquarters promoted the audiovisual remembrance campaign called “Terrorism Leaves Traces”, which was organized by Casa Kiev on social networks and in public roads.

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