Up Front

Sephardic Solo

Maya Haddi is just a tad embarrassed about how she landed her April 28 solo gig with the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony. The 28-year-old singer was throatily belting out "Hava Nagila" at a Bel Air party when composer Yuval Ron walked into the room. "He’s a guy I wanted to impress," says the Israeli-born singer-songwriter. "And the only time he hears me sing is "Hava Nagila."

Haddi need not have worried. A week later, Ron asked her to perform his new piece, "Sephardic Songs of Exile," commissioned by the Jewish Symphony for a concert celebrating Israeli Sephardic and Mizrahi music. "Song" — which begins with the Jewish expulsion from Spain — requires Haddi to improvise Moroccan-style chanting.

It’s no problem for the Yemenite-Israeli musician, who’s been singing for as long as she can remember. Because of a childhood birth defect, Haddi could sing better than she could speak until a series of surgeries corrected the problem when she was around 10. Four years later, she made an impression on a televised Israeli talent show and embarked on her first professional tour. A scholarship to Boston’s Berklee College of Music brought her to the States in 1997. Since graduation, she’s been a finalist in the John Lennon Songwriting Competition, sold songs to MTV’s "Undressed" and has been touring with her jazzy-pop-R & B band, Maya.

"Sephardic Songs of Exile" will be her first performance with a symphony orchestra. "I’m not nervous, I’m excited," she says. "Sometimes ‘Hava Nagila’ can save your life." For more information, call (310) 478-9311. — Naomi Pfefferman, Arts & Entertainment Editor

Vicious Spielberg Hoax

A story claiming that Steven Spielberg was planning a pro-Palestinian documentary on the intifada has been denounced as "an obvious, vicious hoax" by the filmmaker’s chief spokesman, Marvin Levy.

In the fake story, disseminated by e-mail, Spielberg is quoted as saying, "As an American director, who also happens to be Jewish, I can no longer stay silent about what the Israelis and the Zionist movement have been doing in the name of Judaism and with our tax money."

The originators of the hoax attributed the story to The Hollywood Reporter, the influential entertainment industry daily, under the byline of two reporters allegedly working off a news release from DreamWorks, Spielberg’s studio.

In fact, The Hollywood Reporter never ran the story, has no reporters with the names cited, never received a news release and is trying to trace the origin of the hoax, Levy said.

Spielberg himself is on location shooting his upcoming movie, "Catch Me If You Can," and could not be reached for comment.

— Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor