Adath Jeshurun Music
Festivals and Concerts

Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Louisville Kentucky has been putting on unique concerts for 39 years. I was brought in 2003 to increase their media coverage. With each event since being more successful than the last, the bar keeps getting higher.

50th Anniversary of KCHR

In 2010, the challenge was obtaining media attention without any advance live interviews and a program that was not finalized until moments before the concert.

As the event centered around a Black, Jewish, American gospel singer, I added the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, with the mayor honoring Louisvillians in the civil rights community along with the local African American boys and girls choir, to team with the synagogue’s children and adult choirs.

Nearly 800 people from across the city crowded the sanctuary for a late Sunday night concert that had some dancing in the aisles.
Media coverage included a prominent interview in the Courier Journal weekend section; post event photos were picked up by local and statewide publications.

Hurricane Katrina Musicians

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Adath Jeshurun wanted to bring in some of the musicians who has lost not only their jobs, but their homes as well as their musical instruments. In less than two weeks, I was able to rally the community to provide free hotel accommodations (in a top rated hotel), all meals, three paying concerts – and one professional banjo, donated by an anonymous person from Lexington Kentucky. (The banjo was worth $10,000 and the musician was so appreciative of my efforts, that he named the instrument after me.) The musicians were the most recognized performers in their field, having played at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.

After playing at their first concert in Louisville, the leader, Michael White, spoke of how this was the first time since the hurricane that any of them felt at home.

From Bourbon Street to Bourbon Country -- Five Years Later

Five years later, HMG Media Relations brought back to Louisville the legendary clarinet player, Dr. Michael White and his quartet of world-renowned musicians to raise money for the Gulf region.
These musicians, who have performed in Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and across the world, played at a free concert at a local synagogue that also had a New Orleans style dessert reception and the first ever Bourbon Tasting with the four local Bourbon distillers. Over 400 people attended this concert and thousands of dollars were raised.
The concert was taped for repeated broadcasts on the local public radio station.
HMG Media Relations executed every aspect of this event, from contracts, fundraising, travel, staging and scripts to post production overdubs as well as recruited and coordinated over two dozen volunteers. HMG Media Relations even supplied recipes for Bourbon Balls and Bourbon Oatmeal cookies.