Opera v. Cantorial Singing

All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens. Willa Cather
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/willacathe401481.html

 All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens. 

          --Willa Cather

All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/willacathe401481.html

All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/willacathe401481.html

All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens. Willa Cather
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/willacathe401481.html

All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens. Willa Cather
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/willacathe401481.html

The High Holidays are drawing ever closer.  There are a lot of challenges and every single year is different.  This year I am in a new community with new co-leaders in a new High Holiday prayer book.  Three strikes?  

Before cantorial work became part of my life,  I used to sing classical music.  My voice is built for long phrases with soaring lines.  At its most fully realized,  I have enough voice to cut through the largest orchestras that opera calls for.  At the age I am now,  for my voice,  I still have the goods.

In most operas,  the plot progresses and the singers come and go.  I listened to some of my favorite sopranos sing Mozart to see how long they might go on.  Six minutes?  Seven at the outside?  Then the scene changes.  In the aria they are supported by a conductor and other players.  The composer has written in breaks between phrases.  Each bit of vocalism is as perfectly articulated as is possible in that moment.  Six minutes at a time,  then she is off to chew gum or drink water or maybe beer or whatever will restore her for the next cue.  Mozart remains Mozart.

As a cantor, almost nothing of that old life remains.  There is no score that remains constant.  The players change.  Some melodies are improvised.  My voice now has to accommodate material that was never written to be sung by women.  My tessitura and my ability to soar has very limited use in this world.  

And how long?  A cantor remains present and sings every selection for many hours over the course of High Holidays.  During the fasting times,  we sing with no food or water.  While the community is concerned with heavenly judgment, we are reading ahead and conserving for the next big piece or long segment of liturgy.  We are checking with our co-leaders and perhaps leaving behind things that we have prepared because time won’t allow it.  Whatever happens,  we deliver.

This is my returning.  Preparing folders.  Planning.  Articulating text.  I do all of this with the hope that each person within the range of my voice will welcome me into their experience.  Everything I do vibrates within me, and well beyond me.  Every letter of every word that I sing, every melody ancient or modern, every idea that I bring forward, all of the collaboration that happens, goes into the moment between myself and the community, providing connection to aural memory that transcends the immediate hearing even as the leaves begin to fall outside.   In my heart, I’m soaring.

Jessica Leash is the organizer and cantor of Silicon Valley Jewish Meetup, a brand new community serving the San Francisco South Bay.  She will be ordained by Aleph Alliance for Jewish Renewal Ordination program in January of 2018.  This year, she is serving as the High Holiday cantor at Congregation Shir Ami in Castro Valley, CA.  To reach her, please email: cantor@ha-emek.org

If you would like to support her cantorial ordination fund, please visit her GoFundMe campaign at: https://www.gofundme.com/jessicas-cantorial-ordination