Joy in cantors’ music

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

You’ve got to know that any show in which multiple-award-winning composer and conductor Marvin Hamlisch chooses to participate must be incredibly entertaining. And, this June, he’s coming to Vancouver with an unusual trio: Cantor Shimon Farkas from Sydney, Australia, Cantor Alex Stein from Toronto and Cantor Yaakov Motzen from Miami.

Presented by the North Shore Jewish Community Centre/Congregation Har El, Marvin Hamlisch and the Three Cantors is the brainchild of Stein, and a favorite of Hamlisch.

“The thing I think I enjoy about it the most is that there’s a lot of joy in this kind of concert,” Hamlisch told the Independent in an interview from his home in New York City. He explained, “I think usually people think of one cantor and only singing something from Yom Kippur ... some very, very high-brow, usually very traditional songs or pieces that are very spiritual and, yes, you hear them in the temple a couple of times a year, but I don’t think that people associate [cantors with] the idea that you could actually have a happy time, and what I like so much about this concert is there’s so much happy, up, fulfilling music that it’s really exciting to be a part of it. I guess, in other words, what I want to say is, it’s fun.”

According to his bio, Hamlisch has won three Oscars, four Grammys, four Emmys, a Tony, three Golden Globes and a Pulitzer Prize for composing. He holds the position of principal pops conductor for the National Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony and San Diego Symphony. He conducted the Three Cantors concert in Calgary, with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, and in Sydney, with the Sydney International Orchestra, and will conduct the Vancouver performance, which will include members of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

“Because I do so many different things in music, I think of my career as kind of a four-lane highway, all eventually merging into one tunnel,” said Hamlisch about his continuing success. “Sometimes the highway that I’m on is the movie highway, sometimes it’s the theatre highway, sometimes it’s the song highway and sometimes it’s the conducting highway, and the reason I can keep it going is because I’m not doing anything continuously, meaning I’m not doing 20 movies in a row or six shows in a row.”

He said that, by mixing it up, “going from one totally different thing to another, it reinvigorates the next time you do whatever you’re going to do, so if you come off conducting and then you go to compose, you’re invigorated to compose. If you’re composing four weeks in a row, after awhile, it just tires you out, or if you are trying to write or if you’re trying to conduct 13 symphonies in a row, but if, all of a sudden, in the middle of all that, something stops and now you’re saying, it’s time to do a movie score ... the mere fact that I do a lot of different things is what gives me ... the energy that allows me to come into something else with a lot of fresh eyes, fresh ears and ready to roll.”

Hamlisch has worked with some of the biggest names in music and film, including Barbra Streisand, Shirley Jones, Woody Allen and Steven Soderbergh. When asked if ego ever enters the picture, he said, “I think it’s very important that everybody who’s working on a project has to know what it is they’re there to do and what I’m there to do is not to make it difficult for the artist or, so to speak, keep that person in line, just the opposite. I’m there to make it as easy on the artist as possible, knowing that it’s the artist that 20,000 people want to see. They’re not exactly out there to hear the oboe part. They are out there to hear the artist, so my job is to make sure that the artist is happy with the arrangement, is happy with the tempo, and that I’m doing everything I can to keep that artist content because, if that person’s content, the concert’s going to be great.”

Even though his score for the movie The Informant didn’t take home the Golden Globe for which it was nominated this year, Hamlisch said he would like to do another film.

“Right now I’m working on two shows that we’re trying to get to Broadway, and that’s going to take awhile,” he said. “My schedule now for the next six months is mostly concerts, at least two shows, and then, after all that, I will survey the area and see if there’s a shot at a movie.”

When asked if there was anything else he would like to share with Independent readers, Hamlisch said, “I happen to love Canada. I think you have a great country.... We [he and his wife, Terre] love Toronto and Montreal, of course, but we are crazy for Vancouver and we are also nuts for Nova Scotia, which we’ve visited a few times and just think it’s one of the most idyllic and peaceful places in the world.”

Marvin Hamlisch and the Three Cantors concert will be at the Orpheum Theatre on Wednesday, June 23, 7:30 p.m. Tickets ($180 each, with a $90 tax receipt) are on sale now at ticketmaster.ca. For more information, visit 3cantorsvancouver.com.

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