The Hague, Dec. 12. “For many Jewish cantors this profession is a family tradition. In my case it was different, although my mother was soprano and a schoolmate of Maria Callas. My key moment was a trip to the cinema with my father. He took me to The Great Caruso, with Mario Lanza as the famous tenor. It felt as if someone put a spear in my stomach. I can still feel it. Then I knew it: I want to sing.”
Tenor Alberto Mizrahi (1948) – “the Jewish Pavarotti” – is the cantor of the Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago. In addition, he gives worldwide concerts in which he sings cantor music besides opera and jazz. Two years ago he performed the concert Cantors – A Faith in a Song - a Jewish version of The Three Tenors - together with two cantor colleagues in the Portuguese-Israeli Synagogue in Amsterdam. This week Mizrahi introduces a program, together with Cappella Amsterdam and an ensemble conducted by David Porcelijn, in which arrangements of traditional Jewish music are being alternated with new cantorial music by Benedict Weisser and Vanessa Lann.
“ When I was eight years old, we moved from Greek to the United States. There I took a cantorial study and I studied for a year at the Juilliard School of Music. Nowadays there are too few cantors who can sing really well. I did want that, and I knew at age 22 that I was a vocal dinosaur. For a long time I combined opera and the synagogue, but it meant sneaking out to go do a performance – terrible! Now I travel around as cantor anywhere. At first my father didn’t want me to sing in Germany; he survived Auschwitz as one of the last ‘sonderkommandos’. But I did it on purpose, in a church full of non-Jews. That proves that our culture is still alive, despite the slaughter of the Holocaust.
Traditional cantorial music is the art of improvisation. You combine modal Arab sounding melodious ‘motifs’ to highlight the lyrics – while vocally embellishing the notes. But like the Catholic Church who introduced the beat mass in the 70s, the music in many American synagogues consists nowadays of folk songs with guitar accompaniment. People don’t have the patience anymore for a three hour service in Hebrew.
“ The golden days of cantorial music are over, unfortunately. There were singers then! Police officers took off their hats for Solomon Sulzer because he was that famous and respected. My own teacher Moshe Ganchoff (1902-1997) had a golden voice too. In this week’s program I will be singing also modern arrangements of his art. I consider it my task to render the tradition for the contemporary synagogue. And if I open my voice, it works. When Korzo programmer Sylvia Stoetzer approached me for this program with new cantor music, I didn’t hesitate a moment. It is called Kavanah – the intense spiritual state you strive for during prayer. It is the challenge now to invoke that feeling in the listener. That is not easy because normally I don’t sing modern music. But fortunately Benedict Weisser is helpful and mild. If I can’t find a certain note, he will modify the music for me. Conductor David Porcelijn is helpful too. He makes sure that I don’t lose myself too much in improvisations, haha!
Religion often divides people. I hope to attract an audience of Jews and non-Jews. At home in the synagogue that goal isn’t essentially different; I want to attract people and agitate actively against the drainage [meaning fewer and fewer people going to the synagogue] of the synagogue. The arrangements and the compositions I sing now, redefine what it means to be a cantor in this time. I am not raising pious people, but I can bring them in contact with their tradition.”

Kavanah – Tradition and transformation in cantor music (co-production of Korzo and Cappella Amsterdam). Tour through 12/22. Info www.korzo.nl