L ifestyles /C ulture
Former Philly Duo Creates ‘Sephardic Treasures’
M USIC
ELLEN O’BRIEN |
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
WHEN A SPANISH soprano
met a Jewish jazz bassist in
2013, neither of them imagined
where their creative partner-
ship would lead.

“I don’t know why this
works but somehow it does,”
said Alan Lewine, the bassist,
composer and producer behind
the duo Soprano Meets Bass.

Lewine and Ana María
Ruimonte, the soprano half
of the duo, moved from
Philadelphia to Phoenix,
Arizona, in June, just before
the release of their latest
album, “Sephardic Treasures.”
Moving during the COVID-19
pandemic was never going
to be ideal, but Lewine and
Ruimonte arrived just as cases
were starting to rise in Phoenix,
which made the cross-country
road trip something of an
adventure. “It was pretty crazy, as you
can imagine,” Lewine said.

It was ultimately a desire to
be closer to his mother that took
Lewine and Ruimonte away from
Philadelphia. Lewine’s parents
retired to Scottsdale, Arizona,
two decades ago, and while he
lived in other parts of the south-
west and visited Arizona a few
times over the years, he was
happy to go there permanently to
be close to his mother.

“My mother’s a healthy,
strong, very well 89-year-old
woman, but I got to thinking
she deserved to have some
family around,” Lewine said.

“And besides, we were ready to
change things. I guess we’re a
Ana María Ruimonte and Alan Lewine, the unlikely duo of Soprano Meets Bass, in Havana
Photo by Pedro Abascal
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little restless by nature.”
That restless nature is
ref lected in “Sephardic
Treasures,” a genre-defying
anthology of Sephardic songs
and stories that features
musicians from across the
globe. The album was released
in July, just one month
after Lewine and Ruimonte
arrived in Phoenix. Since
then, Ruimonte said, the pair
has been busy promoting the
album with Zoom events and
one small, socially distanced
performance. The project was years in the
making. Since starting Soprano
Met Bass, the pair worked
on a project that focused on
the history of Jews who were
expelled from Spain in the 15th
century. “My background is Ashkenazi
Jewish, not Sephardic, and Ana
María grew up in Spain where,
of course, your background is
Catholic, but basically we’re both
devout musicians,” Lewine said.

“And I said, ‘Well, between us,
she’s Spanish, I’m Jewish — we’re
Sephardic, sort of.’”
Lewine and Ruimonte
began performing Sephardic
songs that would eventu-
ally make their way onto
“Sephardic Treasures” as early
as 2016, when they performed
with flamenco musicians at
Palacio de Los Olvidados, or
the Palace of the Forgotten, in
Granada. For Ruimonte, learning
the history of Sephardic Jews
gave her insight into the multi-
cultural heritage of her own
country. “It has been very inter-
esting to realize that I am a
mix of different cultures, from
the music to the songs to the
stories,” Ruimonte said.

Several of the songs and
stories that appear on the
album were part of the profes-
sional repertoire that Ruimonte
performed with choirs and
orchestras in Spain, and one
song, “Señor Don Gato,” was
something that her mother
sang with her as a child.

Ruimonte was also struck by
the significance of performing
the music that was kept alive by
generations of mothers passing
songs down to their daughters.

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