Welcome!
We are Tracy Friend and Kyra Goldman, and we are excited to share with you our plans for a new, collaborative album of original Jewish music. But before we tell you about our project, we’d like to introduce ourselves.
Tracy Friend is a Jewish singer/songwriter and worship leader who began composing at summer camp in the 1970s, where she experienced alternative forms of worship and discovered the power of expressing prayer through music. Whether writing original melodies for ancient prayers or modern interpretations of biblical text, Tracy tries to connect the rich history of the words and stories to the world of today. She has written a variety of music over the years, including recording 3 CDs of original Jewish music and composing the score for “Love in the Catskills,” a Jewish musical comedy produced in the Chicago area in 1999.
Kyra Goldman has been performing her original songs internationally since she was a teenager, and is now a new face in Jewish music. She started her career in the gospel music genre playing hundreds of concerts across the US and internationally. A mid-tour trip to Israel in 2015 changed the direction of her life and music. “I always knew I had Jewish ancestry and felt it in my heart, but up until then I had no expression of it in my life,” she said. “In Israel I had such a strong feeling like I had been there before, that I was with my people and that I belonged to them.” She was intrigued by the feeling and decided to explore her identity at an Atlanta-area synagogue, which ultimately led her to conversion to Judaism.
The Project!
We met in 2018 at a Jewish Songwriting Cooperative retreat (run by the magnificent Sue Horowitz) and began collaborating shortly thereafter. The culmination of our work is Praise the Eternal!, a collaboration of 12 original songs for Jewish worship (two of which were co-written by Cantor Rosalie Will, Director of Worship and Music at the Union for Reform Judaism). We are in the process of recording these songs, and would love your help and participation in making Jewish music happen!
Recording an album includes many cost components, including studio time, musicians, mixing, mastering, duplication, distribution, travel, postage, sheet music, photography, graphic design, and other miscellaneous expenses. We are doing as much as we can on our own (e.g. recording vocal tracks from home), but still expect to incur around $1,500 per song for a quality product that can be used by the broader Jewish community and that we can be proud of sharing with all of you.
Whether you donate a little or a lot, we sincerely appreciate your love, your support and your encouragement (and you get some fun perks as well)!
Thank you!
Tracy and Kyra
