During winter break of his sophomore year at Brown in 1967, Jonathan Klein traveled to New York with his French horn, baritone sax, and an unusual score he’d written several years earlier. An aspiring composer and son of a Reform rabbi from Worcester, Massachusetts, Klein had taken a traditional Jewish prayer service—complete with candle blessing, Kiddush, psalmist meditation and the Sh’ma—and set it to jazz tunes, from snappy to bluesy to bossa nova and even modal.
