Gary came to Eilat in 2009, with extensive experience as a musician and diverse experience in business marketing. He decided to settle in Eilat, and play Baroque music for the enjoyment of tourists.

Here's an interview with Gary Berlind.

- I moved from the USA to Turkey in 2002, and after about seven years in Istanbul and Bodrum I decided to come to Israel and make Aliyah in September of 2009.  The anti-semitism thing was just beginning to appear there in Turkey, and I was also tired of living as a “foreigner” in a strange country, even though my overall experiences in Turkey were very positive.  I had a pretty full life there, and grew a lot both personally and musically.

Curiously, I had come very close to moving to Israel almost 50 years earlier, when I was in the early stages of my musical career.  I was playing contrebass (double bass, bass violin, whatever you want to call it) with symphony orchestras in and around New York City, and there was an opening for a bass player with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. 

I auditioned for the job and won the position, but for various reasons I didn’t accept the offer and chose instead to stay in New York City, continue freelancing, and attend graduate school at New York University.  From that time on I always wondered what my life would have been like had I taken the job in 1964 and come to Israel, and now, fifty years later, I sort of know.  Life is strangely wonderful sometimes.

Anyway, by the time I decided to make Aliyah my focus musically was on the viola da gamba, as a solo performer.  I chose Eilat because of the many hotels here, where I thought I could find work as a lobby musician, which I had been doing in Turkey, along with giving concerts throughout Istanbul and Bodrum

I’ve not been disappointed with Eilat, and in fact there are lots of opportunities for me to play and work here.  There aren’t many gamba players in Israel, and in Eilat I’m the only one.  It’s fun introducing people here to the gamba, its music, and its history, something I always seem to enjoy.

· People meet you on the promenade on the beach and hear you playing old music. The music is not typical to the local culture. How do people react?

- The music I play, and my instrument, is NEVER typical to any local culture, no matter where I’ve been, and Eilat is no different in that regard than any other place I’ve lived.  People on the promenade, as elsewhere, are intrigued by its unusual appearance, sound, and music, and I always manage to stand out nicely and easily from the musical crowd around me.

·  What's your musical background? Tell us a little about professional experience you have gained in life.

- At the suggestion of an older friend, I started playing the contrebass when I first got into high school in the early 1950s, and within three months of my starting a pleasant miracle happened that changed my life forever.

A famous bass player from the New York Philharmonic and Juilliard School of Music, Frederick Zimmermann, had gone to the same high school many years earlier, and decided to create a bass scholarship in the name of a music teacher at the school, Karl Danielsen, who had inspired HIM when he was a student there.

Since I was the only serious bass player at the school at the time, I got selected for the scholarship by default and suddenly found myself as the protégé of a legendary performer and teacher in New York City, which was perhaps the most important musical center in the United States at the time.  Zimmermann was a great teacher, and I learned from him all the basics of good string playing, plus other things like having high standards, musical and personal integrity, etc.  

I studied with Fred Zimmermann for 12 years, eventually expanding my musical interests to include the viola da gamba and also the cello.  During my musical career I did many things, from orchestral playing to string quartets to early music ensembles and solo performing.  It was all completely unexpected, and I just rode the chariot that had been given to me. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without music.

·  You learn a little about cultures around the world. Do you think that the city of Eilat highlights unique style?

To be fair, however, those “informed” tourists, those who plan their visits to coincide with one of the three or four annual music frestivals here, get filled with the excitement of attending those festival concerts with joy, and then go back to their hotel rooms to relax and cherish their festival memories.

But, for the greater majority of the tourists, Eilat is pretty bland.  Worse than bland even.  The vendor stalls on the tayelet, for example, all seem to sell the same motley assortment of imported Chinese goods, from fuzzy pink slippers to sunglasses. And nothing at all that represents an Eilati culture, or even a true Israeli culture.

The other day I did some counting, and out of some 65 stalls on the tayelet, only two or three sold anything other than that same kind of look-alike plastic “tourist junk”.  I’d say that right now the importers of those cheap commodities must be doing a thriving business, and maybe even some of the better-located stall owners are getting rich.  But I don’t think any of this contributes very much to giving the impression that Eilat has any valid culture of its own, at all.

And the loud rock-music noise on most of the tayelet is a whole other story, too!  I’ve had many tourists approach me on the promenade complaining about the noise level, and asking me how I’m able to stand it.  I tell them that “after the first 70 years you kind of get used to it”, and they laugh.  But I think the cacaphony and raunchiness on the tayelet don’t make very many friends or fans-of-Eilat from the visitors who come here expecting a pleasurable and rewarding vacation experience.

Getrude Stein, a famous American author in the early part of the 1900s wrote critically of Oakland, California (a city right across the Bay from San Francisco), that the problem with Oakland is that “when you get there, there isn’t any there there.”  Because of the dreadful vendor and musical disarray on the tayelet, and the lack of pretty much anything else of a cultural nature happening elsewhere in Eilat, I’d say that Stein’s observation about Oakland would apply equally well to today’s Eilat.  Worse, even…

Eilat today is like Oakland must have been in Stein’s time, void of pretty much anything with a deeper cultural quality to it, only with an abundance now of ear-deafening rock music noise and cheap Chinese imported merchandise.  Not a pretty picture at all.  Especially when one considers the natural beauty of Eilat and its surrounding area.  Plus, of course, for much of the year, the wonderful weather. 

·  If you were asked to market the city of Eilat, How do you think you would do this?

- An old marketing adage is that if you have trouble planning a marketing strategy for a product, then it’s maybe time to look critically at the product and see what changes can be made to improve its marketability.  I think that’s part of the answer to your question.

Before attempting to seriously market itself to the world community, l think Eilat needs to look at itself critically, in the way that a successful glamor model has to look at him or herself in the mirror, to see what’s what – where the imperfections and the assets are, and what should be emphasized, enhanced, or hidden. 

In the case of Eilat, as I have just said, I think the major lack right now is that of a presentable and appealing cultural identity.  One with some class and sophistication to it.  With perhaps a good folksy and modern Israeli spin to it thrown in for good measure.

Once that lack is filled in, then all the marketing for Eilat has to do is to tell the whole Eilat story, honestly.  The rest will happen automatically.