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July 31, 2009
A pioneer in Jewish choral music
Elizabeth Wolak founded four groups here and taught countless voice and piano students.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Earlier this year, on March 10, Elizabeth Wolak was at Government House in Victoria to receive from Premier Gordon Campbell and Lt.-Gov. Steven Point a B.C. Community Achievement Award. She was honored for being "a pioneer in building the musical traditions of Vancouver's Jewish community." Since arriving in the city more than 40 years ago, Wolak has dedicated herself to Jewish choral music and her contribution to the community has been remarkable.
Wolak, who was born in Cracow, Poland, in 1923, had just finished high school when the Second World War broke out. As the German army approached Cracow, her father was advised by his sister, "'Just go,' because the sister came from Germany and she knew what was going on," explained Wolak. Within two days, said Wolak, "My father packed, mother, her mother, my grandmother, myself in the car and we went to the east.... We travelled mostly at night, because during the day they were shooting and [with] falling bombs, you couldn't be on the road." They ultimately ended up in Lvov, Ukraine.
"We were in Lvov only one year, because the Russians decided that all the people who lived normally on the other side, occupied by Germans, should be deported, so one night, they took us into cattle wagons and deported us for a month.
"They took us to the deep forest and we were supposed to work," she continued. They were put to work cutting trees – "That was the light work," she said.
"What was funny, you see, I played piano ever since I was six years old, all the time until the war, and my grandmother made some gloves for me out of shmattes [rags], to have them on while we worked, physically, not to injure my fingers.... That's why they look the way they look now," she said, showing her hands. "Of course, my friends, were laughing: it's so hot, why do you need gloves? I might play piano one day. So, I am an optimist by nature," she said, laughing.
Wolak said the motivation for her piano playing was her father. Although he was a dentist, she said, he was very musical and he played piano by ear, rather than musical score; her mother was less musical.
Wolak and her family (the Waldmans) eventually were released from the camp and, after a total of six years in Russia, they returned to Poland, where they learned that their entire family had been killed in the Holocaust.
"We went back to Cracow, you see," said Wolak. "Poland after the war was different. Cracow was not bombarded at all, for some reason. It's still the way it was, the building was beautiful ... but the people were not the same."
In Poland, Wolak studied English literature and musicology at university, as well as attending the conservatory, graduating in 1951 as a member of postwar Poland's first class of choral conductors. She then earned her master's degree from Cracow's Jagiellonian University and began to establish herself as a choral conductor. She was appointed associate conductor of both the Cracow Boys Choir, the 130-voice chorus of the Cracow State Philharmonic, and the 120-voice girls choir at the Youth Culture House of Cracow.
Despite such success, Wolak and her future husband, Edward, who was a doctor, emigrated to Australia in 1960, because he did not want to live in Poland. The move had its difficulties.
"We had visas, but that piano," she said, pointing to the piano sitting in her living room, "I got from my father as a present after I finished the diploma. It's a Bluthner. It's a first-class concert piano and they didn't let me take it. I went a few times to Warsaw, to the Ministry of Culture, to get permission to get the piano out. Finally, in the last minute, they allowed me. So, that piano travelled with me to Australia and then to here. That is a beautiful piano.... What would I do without it? They didn't want to let a good instrument out of the country, that's why. And finally, they did."
In Australia, Wolak worked in Sydney as a choir director and taught music at secondary schools for the New South Wales Department of Education.
"I taught music in high school, but they gave me a school in a slum area ... girls high school. I have never in my life heard words of the kind in English. Terrible girls! It was some experience." She added, "I was able to get through to them, but only by playing different records that appealed to them."
It was in Australia that Wolak was first asked to organize a Jewish choir – in the synagogue on the north shore of Sydney.
"That is where I got interested in Jewish music," said Wolak, who had not been involved in the Jewish community in Poland. "I didn't know [I would like it] until I started, and then that was my interest."
Finding it too hot in Australia, Wolak and her husband, who had recently married, moved to Vancouver in 1963. She earned her B.C. Teachers' Certificate from the University of British Columbia and established a teaching career in voice and piano.
"I was teaching privately nonstop, even when my babies were small. I was employing babysitters from Eric Hamber," said Wolak, who has two sons, Richard and Arthur. Her husband passed away in 1979.
In addition to teaching, Wolak founded and directed four Jewish choirs in Vancouver. A few months after her arrival, she said, she was approached by the Vancouver Jewish Community Centre, as there was no Jewish choir in Vancouver at that time. She started the community group with pianist Muriel Morris, she said.
"The choir was 35 people," explained Wolak. "We had many concerts and we were in the Kiwanis [B.C. Music Festival] competition. We won twice, we won first place [in 1965 and 1966] ... so, it was funny because there was a reporter from the Sun at the concert and he wrote afterwards – see, we sang in Hebrew, only Hebrew – [that] the adjudicator, he felt that the warmth of the music appealed to him. He felt the warmth of the music, without the language: that's what the Jewish music is, so warm, full of feeling."
In the early 1970s, Wolak was asked by Temple Sholom to lead a choir at the synagogue. "It was a very good choir," she said. It, too, was a winner at a Kiwanis festival, in 1976.
She established a third choir in 1975: an all-male choir at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue. She said she would prepare the group, but, of course, she couldn't conduct them in services.
Then, in 1981, Wolak started her own ensemble, the Shiron Singers, which she directed for 26 years. They performed throughout Vancouver, including at interfaith events and several performances on stage at Expo '86.
"With this choir, I could do many things," Wolak told the Independent.
In her years conducting, Wolak made three recordings, one with the JCC Choir and two with the Shiron Singers. Since the 1980s, she has served as registrar of the National Professional Music Teachers' Association. She has also been an adjudicator for the Richmond Arts Council and, in addition to her conducting and volunteer activities, she continued to teach voice and piano. Her motivation throughout, she said, was a love of music, especially Jewish music.
This is one of the things that made her most recent honor so special.
"Now what I liked," said Wolak about the ceremony in Victoria, was "when they were calling names, there was one person, whoever it was organizing, reading about the person called, just a little bit. So, with me, it was emphasized that I conducted Jewish choirs. That's what I liked because I was very proud of it."
Wolak also said about the event, "This one doesn't forget. Because I like that they really appreciated my work. I am not a born Canadian, so this was very nice."
Jewish community members Rabbi Yosef Wosk and Martin Zlotnik were also honored with a B.C. Community Achievement Award this year.
Wolak's first award was in 1992, when she was acknowledged during N'Shei Chabad's Week of the Jewish Woman for her contributions to the community and overcoming adversity. She received both the Amy Ferguson Award (2006) and Herbert Drost Award (2008) from the B.C. Choral Federation and, in 2008, she was a finalist for the YWCA Women of Distinction Award in the category of arts, culture and design.
Though Wolak retired last year, she is still a member of the choral federation and she still plays piano a bit, whenever a singer needs something. But she mostly listens to music now – she has a vast CD collection – as well as travelling occasionally with her sons, crocheting and reading fiction.
"When I was studying English philology, I had to read some books," she explained. "Now I read what I want – and [I choose] fiction, mostly with a good ending, because I thought there was enough tragedy. I don't like crying over books."
Wolak has lived her life with a sense of optimism. She said it would have been very hard to get through what she went through if she hadn't believed things would be better. This, no doubt, relates to her musical choices: "Unless something was beautiful, I just wouldn't do it."
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