Mark Strauss-Cohn, the rabbi at Temple Emanuel in Winston-Salem, is about to add another item to his resume. And when he does, he'll be able to call himself "language coach" as well.
Like most rabbis, Strauss-Cohn is proficient in Hebrew -- and a godsend to members of the Piedmont Chamber Singers who are trying to sing that language correctly.
The singers, with William Osborne conducting, will perform several works with Hebrew texts Saturday in Hanes Auditorium at Salem College. Strauss-Cohn has been working with both Osborne and the singers to ensure such fine points as the proper pronunciation of vowel sounds and accents.
"They've given me a lot of responsibility," Strauss-Cohn said during a break in a singers' rehearsal at Augsburg Lutheran Church. "I'm very humbled about it."
The pieces that Osborne has programmed -- in addition to an English-language version of Arthur Honegger's King David -- include two settings of Haskivenu, the Jewish evening prayer. One of these is by Salamone Rossi (c.1570-c.1630), a Mantua native associated with the court of the Gonzaga family.
The other Haskivenu comes courtesy of David Nowakowsky (1848-1921). Nowakowsky, the cantor of the Brody Synagogue in Odessa for more than 50 years, also wrote many compositions; these pretty much disappeared during the Soviet era but have been recently rediscovered and published, Osborne wrote in program notes for Saturday's performance.
The singers will perform Eric Whitacre's Five Hebrew Love Songs, which features the Hebrew poetry of Hila Plitmann, Whitacre's Israeli wife.
"I'm honored that they would want to consider doing Jewish liturgical music and Israeli music as well," Strauss-Cohn said.
Strauss-Cohn said that he does similar language coaching whenever his temple choirs sing Hebrew. He said that you need a good teacher to work your way through Hebrew that is set to music. The reasons are many and make for what Osborne described as "a very complex process."
Hebrew is written from right to left, but music flows in the opposite direction. The Piedmont Chamber Singers aren't singing Hebrew words but transliterated versions of them. During the rehearsal, Strauss-Cohn sometimes had to write out what he was hearing in Hebrew and compare it to the transliterated version before he could judge how well it was being rendered.
"It was very interesting," Strauss-Cohn said, referring to various passages. "One person comes along and breaks up a word in a very unusual place and even throws in an extra letter. In this one, it was broken up perfectly."
And in some instances, the singers ended up revising a transliterated syllable on the spot to pronounce it correctly. The sound "im" became "yim," for example.
Like many singers of classical music, the Piedmont Chamber Singers are no strangers to foreign languages. But usually, they're such Western European ones as German, French and Latin. Their foundational similarities with English make them much easier than Hebrew, which uses a completely different alphabet. And, of course, many singers learn to sing in German, French or Italian when they study at school.
Even so, Osborne likes to bring in an objective set of ears during the rehearsal process to do what he calls a "double check." A native speaker of Spanish might, for example, tell him that the Spanish his group is singing needs a Latin American flavor as opposed to a Castilian one.
Before he took over artistic leadership of the Piedmont Chamber Singers, Osborne often went on European tours with choristers from Denison University. He remembers the apprehension he felt when he tried out a Greek piece on an American audience before performing it in Greece.
"It's all Greek to us at the moment," he remembers telling the audience. "We hope it's going to be Greek to the Greeks when we get there."
■ The Piedmont Chambers Singers will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in Hanes Auditorium at Salem College. Tickets at the door are $18, $16 for seniors and $10 for students. Children through grades 12 will pay $9 when accompanied by an adult. All tickets will be reduced $2 if reserved in advance by e-mailing manager@piedmontchambersingers.org or calling 336-722-4022.
■ Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.
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