The album “Achinoam Nini and Gil Dor , Live in Concert” is a faithful documentation of my first period of work with Gil Dor, which began with a duet concert in a festival in Tel Aviv’s “Cinemateque” called “Jazz, Movies and Videotape”, Feb.8, 1990 .
This concert, attended by 120 curious people (we were utterly unknown), included specially arranged cover versions of old standard tunes (“Imagination”, “You are Too Beautiful”, “Masquerade”, “‘Freight Trane”,” We'll Be Together Again”.), and original arrangements of a variety of songs we love, in Hebrew and English, like “Drive My Car” (Beatles), “Material Girl” (Madonna),”Shir HaYakinton “(Rivka Gvili) and “Yalda Im Tzamot” (Gershon Prensky). In addition, our show had a “creator’s corner” for songs penned by the aspiring young songstress (yours truly). It included, at first, only two songs: “Eyes of Rain”, and ‘She Went to the River”. Later, that corner grew to become an entire room, with songs like “Uri”, “Mishaela” and “Eye Opener” its permanent inhabitants. These duet concerts continued uninterrupted, and gradually became more and more popular in their own eccentric undergroundish way, until the Gulf War suddenly erupted. We were forced, sadly, to discontinue our performances until further notice. So as not to lose our minds, we recorded a wild satirical version of the Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love”(dedicated to the Emir of Kuwait), and an emotional rendition of “Ave Maria” (Bach/Gunaud) with original lyrics, a personal prayer for peace. We put both these songs on cassettes and gave them out as gifts to the soldiers manning the “Patriot” missiles in Israel. “Ave Maria” was later to find its way to the album “Noa”, and change our lives by getting us invited to sing for the Pope and 100,000 people at the Vatican, but that?s a different story Anyway, we were getting really impatient with the war, like everyone in Israel, and could no longer delay our plan of recording a live concert with the intent of releasing our first album. We decided to plan a date, regardless of the war, invite a few friends and family members to our favorite concert venue, “Tzavta” Tel-aviv(a cult institution in Israel), and play a gig, no matter what. At the time it was forbidden under law to have any sort of public gathering for safety reasons (remember those scud missiles?), so we had no choice. And then, lo and behold – a small miracle! That very evening it was announced that the war was officially over. Hurray! And on the eve of “Purim”! (a very happy Jewish holiday). What a celebration! “Tzavta” was packed, the gig was wonderful, Guy Yaffe (our incredible sound engineer) did a great job, and our first album was on its way. This was a very daring album for us, virtually production-free, primal, naive and wide open. It was our first declaration of taste and sensitivity. Today, its a bit hard for us to believe we ever sounded like that, but it is full of love and magic.
July 1991