Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 3, 2022

For countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, these are the best of times. Even with the pandemic still simmering, hes been traveling far and wide introducing himself on some of the worlds most august stages. Reached by phone in Switzerland, he was getting set for his Zurich Opera Housedebut singing Monteverdis Madrigals in the world premiere of a ballet choreographed by Christian Spuck. In May, he is set to make hisMetropolitan Operadebut in the U.S. premiere of Brett DeansHamlet, performing the role of Rosencrantz.

The more he travels, the more the Oakland-based Cohen values opportunities to perform in the Bay Area, and that often means collaborating with the S.F.-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale, where hes been a mainstay in recent years. On March 10, he will return to his liturgical rootsfor Cantorial (Re)Volutions, the seasons concluding program in the PBOs innovative Jews & Music initiative. The concert-lecture at the JCC of San Francisco will focus on the history of cantorial music, an evolution Cohen will explore alongside Congregation Emanu-Els Cantor Emeritus Roslyn Barak.

The program includes liturgical settings such as Max Janowskis Avinu Malkeinu and Handels O Lord, whose Mercies numberless and How Green Our Fertile Pastures Look, from Saul and Solomon, respectively. Ideally contoured for Cohens voice, theyre pieces that have become signature works for the countertenor, a range often described as androgynous. For Cohen, 28, the program offers a nice encapsulation of the music that brought me to singing, the music I find most enjoyable and meaningful. A lot of singers grow up singing in church. That was my story, but in shul and synagogue.

Launched by the PBO and UC Berkeley Jewish studies and music scholar Francesco Spagnolo in 2015, the Jews & Music program has illuminated Jewish musics fascinating feedback loop between sacred and secular settings. With its focus on the evolving role of liturgical performance, Cantorial (Re)Volutions illustrates themes that have preoccupied Spagnolo. His research has led him into 17th-century Italian ghettos working on the idea that the synagogues were public spaces that attracted large audiences, where people came to hear the music that Jews were making, Spagnolo said.

Spagnolo has found that the audiences included many non-Jews, including important early Baroque composers, turning synagogues into sites of multicultural encounters, he said. Its a perspective that places the Baroque canon in a different light, while also offering a chance to continue to think in more modern terms about the relationship between the synagogue and the stage. For Cantorial (Re)Volutions there are selections presented by both musicians that span the classical cantorial repertoire to more contemporary cantorial compositions, Yiddish art songs and also opera. Were taking stock of all of this.

Simply bringing Cohen and Barak together for a musical encounter generates its own wonderful frisson. While Cohen started singing in synagogue as an adolescent and made his way to opera halls, Baraks journey followed the opposite path, from her conservatory training as an opera singer to her status as one of the most esteemed cantorial voices in America.

Barak plans on presenting an array of material that reflects the things Ive done in my career, she said. Selections will include a Yiddish art song by Lazar Weiner, a Ladino song reflecting her mixed Sephardic-Ashkenazi heritage, an aria from Mascagnis Jewish-themed opera Lamico Fritz, Debbie Friedmans You Are the One, and also something by one of the great contemporary synagogue composers, Ben Steinberg, she said.

Of Cohen, Barak said, Aryeh is a consummate artist, really a star now. And hes a lovely guy. I think itll be fun to do this program with him, though were still working out the details.

In many ways, Cohen literally discovered his voice in a neighborhood Brooklyn synagogue where he filled in for an assistant cantor on maternity leave on Yom Kippur (no pressure!). The senior cantor made him a recording so he could memorize the traditional melodies, or missinai, and he was charged with chanting the entire Amidah, which meant freely choosing these melodies that God passed on at Mount Sinai, and I practiced everything in my man voice, the way I thought I should sound.

There was one prayer he chanted in the voice that felt most natural, which, in hindsight, he realized was in the countertenor range, though at that point he didnt know the term. I wanted to sing one piece in the voice that I was most comfortable with and when I came off the bimah the cantor said, What did you do for that one prayer? Can you do that on everything?

Hed prepared everything in a lower range, so he declined, but the next year Cohen embraced the countertenor sound, and thats where hes lived vocally ever since. No matter where he performs, he takes the synagogue with him, connecting and interpreting melodic phrases through the filter of missinai.

People will tell me, youre so musical, Cohen said. Well, I spent my formative teenage years chanting the traditional way, using traditional Jewish scales, musical modes that can sound like klezmer. My job was to shape the text and those modes and bring out the most meaningful experience for the listeners and for me. That developed my musicality. Im fortunate to be traveling all over. This fall Im debuting in Moscow and Amsterdam. But to this day I love singing this music.

Go here to read the rest:

Oaklander explores the 'revolution' of cantorial music J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

Category: Synagogue
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