[00:00:01]
MARK SLOBIN: And I must say–
[00:00:02]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Tell me who you are.
[00:00:05]
MARK SLOBIN: –is to give me an idea of how they got into this. I mean that’s what you were–we were–talking about.
[00:00:10]
LAWRENCE AVERY: How they got into this?
[00:00:11]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:00:12]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Okay. I got into this in that kind of, um, well, it’s really been the legacy insofar as I’m concerned. I grew up in an extraordinarily musical family, knowing at a very early age: A) that I could sing.
[00:00:31]
MARK SLOBIN: Mhm.
[00:00:32]
LAWRENCE AVERY: B) that um, that both my mother’s– from my mother’s side of the family, her father there– he was a hazzan.
[00:00:43]
MARK SLOBIN: Now where was this?
[00:00:43]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Her father was a cantor. He was basically a storekeeper. But came the High Holy Days, he officiated in a synagogue on the Lower East Side. My father, while they were all very musical people, my father’s family, there were no musicians there. But somewhere along the– they all sang. They always sang. And I learned very quickly that my father was a hazzan, you see. So my father also– with him, it was also a kind of a second, second profession. He was moonlighting as a hazzan. He adored Hazzanim, and he collected cantorial records. So there was always a record spinning on the Victrola when I was very young. I’m 57 now. So this goes back, really, to the time of there were no long playing records and no tapes, and there was just radio and so forth. And they were live hazzanim. And there were live cantors around.
[00:01:38]
LAWRENCE AVERY: If I use Yiddish or Hebrew terms, you know what I’m talking about?
[00:01:42]
MARK SLOBIN: I know Yiddish, that’s fine.
[00:01:42]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Okay. I knew early that I was involved in Jewish music in the Cantorate, mostly the legacy of my father. My mother was– had an extraordinary kind of voice. She had perfect pitch and a beautiful, true soprano. And she played the piano. So she would play for my father, and my father would sing. And eventually, as soon as I got to be past four or five, I knew that I was a singer. So I sang and I was belting out songs from the top of the roof of our car, I remember.
[00:02:14]
MARK SLOBIN: What kind of songs? Everything…?
[00:02:15]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Everything. I mean, it was the depression. So I knew a song called Buddy Can You Spare a Dime? And I knew Yiddish songs. And my father would like to put together little acts or little duets. And he would often… If he got a job for the holidays or for the festivals, he would often invite me to sing with him or sing a little duet with him. So that early on I knew that I could sing and that I enjoyed it. I loved the singing.
[00:02:44]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Come about age nine or ten, by that time it was understood that I would study the piano. There was a grand piano. We were the only people in the whole, in both families that had a baby grand piano. It was a cheesy piano, but it was a baby grand. So I started piano lessons. Shortly after that, I got into yeshiva and so yeshiva firmed up, really. We moved from Williamsburg to Crown Heights, where there was a good, modern type Yeshiva: Crown Heights Yeshiva, it was one of the more forward looking yeshivas. They taught both a good secular education and Hebrew education. And immediately, I mean, I would– the minute I stepped into a class, I would inform the people that I was musical, that I was available, that I could sing. We were a very orthodox family. So we observed all the proper things, making it– And for me, because I do a lot of recruitment also, I have done recruitment for the cantorate–
[00:03:51]
MARK SLOBIN: Oh good.
[00:03:51]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I was involved and am involved in different degrees with the administration of the Hebrew Union College. So that for a while…I mean tomorrow I go back and we’re auditioning people, you see, for next year’s incoming class. The reason I say that is because I’ve always been concerned with what are the basic requirements that make for a good traditional cantor. I had them.
[00:04:15]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:04:15]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I had a voice.
[00:04:17]
MARK SLOBIN: You grew up with them.
[00:04:17]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I had the proper musical background from age eight or seven. I had the religious background. That is, I went to a yeshiva.
[00:04:28]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:04:28]
LAWRENCE AVERY: There was no….I was not a late bloomer, so to speak. However, I was sort of distracted for a while. Loving music and loving secular music, I suddenly discovered what real music was as well as, you know, little Yiddish songs. I mean, I became an opera buff at age ten. At age ten, my parents and the family were so sure that I had an unusual voice and a great gift. I wasn’t sure, but they were sure. They took me out of school, actually, and tried to give me a sort of a tutorial education.
[00:05:08]
MARK SLOBIN: Really?
[00:05:09]
LAWRENCE AVERY: In order to groom me for showbiz.
[00:05:11]
MARK SLOBIN: My gosh.
[00:05:13]
LAWRENCE AVERY: And it was probably one of the most miserable, and yet one of the most enchanting, years of my life. For about a year or a year and a half. I was tutored. I was taken out of the yeshiva. I was given piano lessons, dancing lessons, singing lessons, acting lessons. And I hated and loved it. You see?
[00:05:31]
MARK SLOBIN: Wow. Yeah.
[00:05:32]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I don’t know if you know the name, there was once somebody in show business called Bobby Breen. He was a boy star in the movies. And I was going to be the next Bobby Breen. Well, I didn’t become the next Bobby Breen. And in about a year and a half, I was plunk back in the yeshiva, you see.
[00:05:47]
MARK SLOBIN: It’s interesting because I was thinking–
[00:05:48]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yes, go ahead.
[00:05:48]
MARK SLOBIN: Somebody with your age and background, maybe it was Beverly Sills in a way.
[00:05:52]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Oh, I knew her. We grew up together.
[00:05:55]
MARK SLOBIN: That’s what I was thinking. And she as a woman–
[00:05:55]
LAWRENCE AVERY: We lived…We lived two blocks away from each other.
[00:05:58]
MARK SLOBIN: Okay.
[00:05:58]
LAWRENCE AVERY: And we traveled the subways together because she was going to the same kiddy shows that I was going.
[00:06:05]
MARK SLOBIN: That’s exactly what popped into my mind.
[00:06:05]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Oh, exactly. Your guess is right. I knew her. And in fact, a few years ago, I wrote a little note and I said, “You’ll never remember me, but your mother used to take me on…” She said, “of course, I remember.” At any rate…
[00:06:18]
MARK SLOBIN: I was just thinking about that. That her being a girl, that maybe, you know, she was going to go through that path in a sense.
[00:06:24]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:25]
MARK SLOBIN: Whereas…
[00:06:26]
LAWRENCE AVERY: She was extraordinarily gifted. As a child, she was unbelievable. In the same group, there was me, there was somebody named Adelaide Bishop, there was Beverley–or Bubbles as we called her–and then there was a gal who became a movie star. Ann Blyth.
[00:06:45]
MARK SLOBIN: Oh, really?
[00:06:45]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Ann Blyth. They hated each other. These, here were these three prima donnas, you know.
[00:06:49]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:06:50]
LAWRENCE AVERY: And I used to come home and tell my mother I said, “you should hear Beverly Sills singing La Traviata, mom.” At age ten, you see.
[00:06:58]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:06:59]
LAWRENCE AVERY: And then Ann Blyth would sing “Il bacio” than Sills or something like that. Quite incredible. They would try to outdo each other. Shades of Mozart’s [inaudible]. At any rate, I went back to the yeshiva, finished my education there, went…And then came another turning point. But I had already had beautiful grounding in authentic, traditional Judaism.
[00:07:22]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:07:22]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I could I could daven a whole service. For my bar mitzvah, I davened the whole service. There was, I just had a gift, and it was a lovely voice. Although by the time 13 came around, my voice was beginning to change. My father was wise in one respect and unwise in another. He never let me join a Jewish choir.
[00:07:43]
MARK SLOBIN: Mmhm.
[00:07:45]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Many of the great– that’s the one little component that was missing in my life. Had I had that, and I think that’s a terribly important–I think you may have it in some of your other interviews: early choir training, exposure to real hazzanim–
[00:08:01]
MARK SLOBIN: The Meshorerim phenomenon, I mean…
[00:08:02]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Right, the Meshorerim phenomenon. I didn’t have that. Somewhere along the line, somebody told my father, “Don’t put him in the choir. He’ll lose his voice. They’ll exploit him. They’ll kill him.”
[00:08:11]
MARK SLOBIN: I see. Yeah, yeah.
[00:08:12]
LAWRENCE AVERY: He was also worried that I would be violating Shabbos…
[00:08:16]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah, well.
[00:08:16]
LAWRENCE AVERY: By going, by traveling with the choir.
[00:08:17]
MARK SLOBIN: Well, Meshorerim kids are known to be a little loose.
[00:08:19]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Oh, yeah, they were loose. They were wild. And they were they were a rough bunch. I met a few of them.
[00:08:24]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:08:24]
LAWRENCE AVERY: They used to come as guests to Crown Heights, where I lived, when when a star hazzan would come into Crown Heights. Then the Meshorerim had to be put up in different homes. And then I would, you know, I would in awe look at them–
[00:08:38]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Are we running out of tape? Am I talking too fast?
[00:08:39]
MARK SLOBIN: No, it’s just my needle…
[00:08:41]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Okay. So I didn’t have that. However, I had my father’s guidance. He was not a musician. My mother’s guidance. She was a musician. Come age 13, came the high school phenomenon. And then…And that was a fantastic turning point. I went to Music and Art, to the High School of Music and Art. Well, I mean, I had, I knew about this and I knew about opera, and in the grooming for the stardom, which never materialized, I had learned a repertoire of Schubert songs and operetta things. And I could sing in German and in French and in Italian. But I then came to Music and Art, and then I found that there was yet another level.
[00:09:25]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:09:27]
LAWRENCE AVERY: It was just phenomenal. I was taken out of Brooklyn to the city college campus which was where Music and Art was, and I met–I met the outside world.
[00:09:37]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:09:38]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I met Brahms and I met Schubert, Mozart.
[00:09:42]
MARK SLOBIN: And a lot of kids who could do it as well you did or better.
[00:09:44]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Well I was good. They loved me and I loved them. And my father was worried. My father was afraid that the exposure to the outside world would destroy my commitment to authentic Judaism. My mother said, “let him go. We’ll make a deal. He’ll go to yeshiva three times a week for a kind of an extension course. My yeshiva gave that to people who went to secular high school. And so I went on, and I fooled around a little. Once, there was a concert on a Friday night. I said, “I’m going to be in that concert.” [mumbles] I got on the subway and I went, you know. And I moved with a crowd of young people that were sophisticated. And I learned a little bit about swing music, and I learned to play the clarinet in Music and Art. And I just had a…absolutely, those were the happiest years. And I became an even better performer. I really became a real performer. My father still encouraged me and always said, whether it was a written scenario or an unwritten or an unspoken scenario, he hoped that I would be the cantor. After all, he was a cantor.
[00:10:56]
MARK SLOBIN: Right.
[00:10:57]
LAWRENCE AVERY: My mother’s father was a cantor. And what greater…What greater contribution could I make? My dreams were really greater than that. I wanted to be something important in the real musical world. And once I graduated from Music and Art, although the war was on then, it was already– I– it was ’44. I graduated from Music and Art in 1944. We were right in the heart of the war. I said, “I’ve got to go to Juilliard,” you see. And here I was drawn further into Juilliard, opera, the stage. I really wanted the stage very much. My father kept pressuring me, encouraging me. He would say, “Why don’t you get a job teaching music, Hebrew music at the Brooklyn Jewish Center?” I wanted no part of it. Nothing. Well, davened for a sho–. I would daven, you see. I would officiate locally in our synagogue. We had a Young Israel synogogue, which always encouraged laypeople, you see. They had no professional cantor.
[00:12:02]
LAWRENCE AVERY: And I always sang with my father on the High Holidays. As I grew older, I still sang little duets with him that I sang as a child. But I was a very, very educated musician by then. I mean, I could sight read, I could play the piano. My piano lessons never ceased, you see. I’d been in dramatic productions. I had been in opera productions at Music and Art. And I was, you know, I was going to…Next step was going to be the Met. I mean, I was going to be in the Met. Went into Juilliard, but that was a year. And after the year was up, I was in the Navy, you see.
[00:12:35]
MARK SLOBIN: Oh.
[00:12:36]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I mean, we were still in the midst of the war. Though, fortunately, the European War was over. I spent a year and a half in the Navy and very wisely found the chaplain. And I said, like I said, when I was six years old, “Hey, I can sing.”
[00:12:53]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:12:53]
LAWRENCE AVERY: “I can help you.” And it was a very cushy job from there on in.
[00:12:58]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:12:58]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I was leading services. I was soloist at the Blue Jacket Choir from Great Lakes. I did national radio with the Blue Jacket Choir–soloist because I was, after all I was the only Jew in the Blue Jacket Choir. It was a very WASP kind of establishment. When I finally got out of the Navy, came back to the Juilliard to pursue my very, very wonderful education. I began to study even more seriously and got some wonderful teachers who said, “Yeah, you’re talented. You’re really…” I was mostly– my passion was opera. I really wanted opera. Not really knowing then that I was rather limited: my size, my look. My talents were for the comic, for the lighter thing rather than to be the Primo Tenore of La Traviata or…
[00:13:58]
LAWRENCE AVERY: At that point when I was home, my father said to me, again, wisely. He said, “Now you will study hazzanim seriously.” I said, “What do you mean, seriously?” He says, “Don’t you know how it works?” I was really most naive about it. There were teachers. There was teacher X here and there was teacher X there. There was Hazzan Lipitz here and there was Berman there. And there was Raisen here and Bimal here. And so… And he said, “I’ll find you one.” And he found me, Simon Raisen, who was a wonderful and a fascinating old man. He was positively ancient by that time. He could–he would be hunched over and the glasses, and his eyes were so bad that he would write the notes and he would insist that I put in the words. But of course, I knew the words very well. I knew all the words by heart. And in two years, he wrote for me the way he wrote for Balfour or for Cantor Bloch, or for any number of these people, or for…Or the way Katchko–Katchko was another one he wrote. He wrote for me the entire repertoire. See, that’s the way you did it. Hand written. We didn’t even have– he didn’t even use Ozalid blueprint copy. I think we pay them $750–seven hundred and fifty dollars.
[00:15:24]
MARK SLOBIN: Uh huh, for the whole thing.
[00:15:24]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Spread out over two years.
[00:15:26]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:15:26]
LAWRENCE AVERY: We’d give him five bucks at a time.
[00:15:31]
MARK SLOBIN: Oh, that’s a decent amount of money in those days.
[00:15:32]
LAWRENCE AVERY: And I would go to his place, and I would go to his studio on Dean Street in Brooklyn and he would write for me. And shortly after that, again, my father was like the deus ex machina. He would say– He had a job someplace out in the Rockaways and say, “You know, I’m really, I’m tired of that job.” He says. “You’re about ready to take it over.” And he maneuvered me into this job, which was good in a way. It gave me the opportunity to try and to perform everything that I had learned via my partir tour here, you know?
[00:16:10]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:16:12]
LAWRENCE AVERY: He even go– Oh, no, even before that, he got me a High Holy Day job when I was barely ready for it. He got me a High Holy Day job, and once in around May, and I had a camp job, and I had to finish the repertoire over the summer in mailed installments, which I used to get. Well, the end of it was that I davened for the High Holy Days, and I was somewhat successful. I was really very immature in terms of the cantorate.
[00:16:37]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:16:38]
LAWRENCE AVERY: There was a certain dimension of experience that I lacked and stylistically I didn’t know enough. For two reasons. One is that I stopped listening to my father. Another reason was I never listened to the records that my father wanted me to listen to. He wanted me to listen to the great hazzanim on record. And I said, “You listen to them. You’re not a musician. I need the music.” And the other element that I mentioned before, that was that I was not one of the Meshorerim. I was never a Meshorerim. I finished the repertoire. I got the little job there out in the Rockaways and stayed there about three years. To some degree, there weren’t great expectations. They didn’t expect much for me. I didn’t expect much from them. They paid me like $2,000 for the whole year. I used to go out there weekends and sleep over. It was an Orthodox synagogue and they required everything. I was a solo bit and I don’t think I was even very good, you see. My heart was still elsewhere.
[00:17:35]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I met this beautiful, beautiful woman at the Juilliard, when I was just about graduating, or maybe I had graduated, I decided to take a masters. Yes, I decided to take a masters, and I also got into the opera theater there. I had finally made it into the opera theater. And my heart was still with opera. And she said to me, “You could be a better hazzan than you are. What you really need is some real coaching.” And by some crazy twist of luck, I was singing at Tanglewood that summer, and I met somebody who told me that there was a person named, Moshe Ganchoff. That’s the guy. This venerable old man now. And I met him. I was introduced to him. I heard him sing. And I found out that he was teaching at the Hebrew Union College, along with some other very exciting, truly brilliant cantors. Like Abraham Shapiro, Moshe Ganchoff, Gershon Ephros, who was responsible for those fabulous anthologies. Max Helfman was there at the time. A.W. Binder was there at the time. These were all the Gadolim–all the great ones.
[00:18:44]
LAWRENCE AVERY: And I said, “Well”–and we were engaged to be married–my wife says, “You know, why don’t you–maybe you want to go to school there for a while.” So I went down there, I asked around and I met a lovely lady there who said to me, “You know, are you interested in a job?” I said, “Yeah, I’m interested in a job too.” Besides going to school. She says, “Well, there’s a job up in the New Rochelle where I live.” And she happened to be the registrar of the school. I said, “I’m not interested in the job so much as I’m interested in going to the school.” She says, “Well, you can do both. You can go to school, you can have a job and da da da.” And before I knew it, I was engaged to be married. We decided to get married. I matriculated into the School of Hebrew Union College, where all these great people were. This is before there was a school here.
[00:19:27]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah, right.
[00:19:28]
LAWRENCE AVERY: And I took the job in New Rochelle. Well, the influence of Ganchoff was tremendous. He may– he sort of raised my– he heightened my sensitivity to music, to the cantorial music. I also began to realize after several competitions, I almost won a Naumburg one year. I was a finalist with Leontyne Price, who was a good friend of ours. My wife was also a finalist. And um, I sang with wonderful people. I had great experiences. Because I had my fling at Tanglewood. I had my, I sang at Carnegie Hall. I did the Berlioz Requiem twice with the National Orchestra. And I did some– and I did a series of recitals. I was under management. That’s how my name became Lawrence Avery, because my name isn’t really Lawrence Avery. My name is really Avery Cohen. In those days…
[00:20:19]
MARK SLOBIN: Of course.
[00:20:19]
LAWRENCE AVERY: …a singer couldn’t be a singer with a Jewish name like Cohen. And so I landed back–I landed up in New Rochelle 32 years ago. And I also entered the school 32 years ago. After about two years in the school, they recognized some of my teaching talents. And I also began to realize that I had some some potential there. And I began to teach for them as well. And stayed in New Rochelle. And I’ve been in New Rochelle ever since. So I’ve been in New Rochelle 32 years and realized that my father was right. I was right, too, in that I, I realized that I was not destined for stardom. I was not destined for an operatic career. My opera directors told me that at about the third year at the Juilliard too. “You know,” he says,” “You’d be good. You can sing Basilio in Nozze di Figaro and Giacchino in Fidelio but not–never, never the Duke in Rigoletto.” So then I found out that this is where my talents were.
[00:21:29]
MARK SLOBIN: Mm hmm. Well that’s wonderful.
[00:21:30]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I’ve been in this racket ever since, so to speak. I’ve done a tremendous amount of teaching in all these years. And possibly one of the most joyful experiences of coming to these conventions is to meet a lot of my students. I mean, today there was a row of, like, 15 people in a row. And I turn to one of my present students, and I said, “Do you realize that everybody in this row is somebody who I taught?” And on your list even. Where’s your list? On your list. Among those people, I would say. Well, let me see. Akiva [sic] was a student of mine. Rushgag [sic] was a student of mine. Um, not so bad.
[00:22:23]
MARK SLOBIN: So this was, you were teaching–
[00:22:25]
LAWRENCE AVERY: This is, in all the years because some of these people went to HUC. Some of these people went the Hebrew Union College.
[00:22:30]
MARK SLOBIN: So you continued at HUC?
[00:22:32]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I’m still there.
[00:22:33]
MARK SLOBIN: Oh, you’re still there.
[00:22:33]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I’m still there. I teach one full day. I teach about 7 hours. And I’m also on the administration. I have been, I’ve been there sometimes, some years, three days a week, some weeks two days…
[00:22:46]
MARK SLOBIN: Someone Silverman [mumbles]
[00:22:46]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yes, Kurt joined us recently. Kurt is a graduate of HUC. He preceded me there.
[00:22:54]
MARK SLOBIN: Well, I guess the inevitable question is, you know, the differences between the HUC and the JTS.
[00:23:01]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Um, well, one might say, okay, I went to HUC only because there was no other school.
[00:23:06]
MARK SLOBIN: Right.
[00:23:07]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Or. And/Or because I…The people who are at HUC at that time were– and when JTS came into existence they certainly didn’t have the people who were teaching at HUC.
[00:23:18]
MARK SLOBIN: Mhm.
[00:23:19]
LAWRENCE AVERY: So the greats were truly of HUC. HUC grabbed them off. Eric Werner is still at HUC. You know, Werner, you know who he is. I had the privilege of studying with him. Differences. You can go to HUC and become a cantor to serve of Klal Yisrael. In other words, to serve a Reform Conservative or even an Orthodox synagogue, if you’re if you’re– Whereas if you go to a JTS, I still think by their own admission, you can’t really, you really do not learn as broad, a broad a musical repertoire. Perhaps emphasis on certain Judaic things are stronger and better at JTS. I think they sort of balance each other off. There have been better years at HUC. There have been worse years at HUC and been better years at JTS.
[00:24:17]
MARK SLOBIN: What kind of people does Yeshiva turn out?
[00:24:20]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yeshiva doesn’t turn out anybody. Yeshiva started out with a good idea. They were number three in the establishment of the school, but they never really could get off the ground. I have the feeling that their standards of admission were not very high. They…it was not a full time thing. Anybody could come there part time, full time. They were giving courses at night. They didn’t care who came. And they never attracted a decent, or shall I say, a really important faculty. Also, I’m afraid to say that levels of musical taste vary with the institutions as well. And the level of musical taste of the Yeshiva, I’m afraid, is not what it is at the seminary or at HUC.
[00:25:08]
MARK SLOBIN: I’ve had a couple of conversations with Nulman who’s now gone.
[00:25:12]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yeah, Nulman is a nice man. And I’ve admired some of his work. Schall is another one who taught. Do you who Schall is? Noach Schall. Also taught there. Um, both very capable and competent people, musicians and so forth. I’m more taken with the work that Schall and the contribution that Schall has made to the Cantorate and to Jewish music than with Nulman’s. I think that Nulman is, I don’t know. He was a talented Cantor. He may have been a good teacher, too, but he certainly, I don’t think he was as creative a person as he could have been.
[00:25:54]
MARK SLOBIN: So are the Orthodox really kind of separated off in general?
[00:25:57]
LAWRENCE AVERY: The Orthodox.
[00:25:58]
MARK SLOBIN: They remain kind of…?
[00:25:59]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I think they remain isolated and isolated in a bad way because they’re not…
[00:26:07]
MARK SLOBIN: I mean, are there any cantors that you consider important that are Orthodox cantors, in terms of the preservation of the tradition now? Or are they more…?
[00:26:19]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Cantors that I consider to be a good Orthodox Cantors. And important in the preservation of the traditions…
[00:26:25]
MARK SLOBIN: In other words, the people of this generation that one would count if you were counting who are the cantors that, you know…
[00:26:31]
LAWRENCE AVERY: No, I really don’t. I really don’t. There’s a tendency in the Orthodox world, as is there always used to be, to shun real musical education. To…Because real musical education only will come in with, in a conservatory or in a decent place. And such people are simply not– And I don’t mean to put them down. Orthodoxy says you can’t go to a conservatory. Orthodoxy says…
[00:27:00]
MARK SLOBIN: Well, but yet, I mean, the great cantors of 50-60 years ago didn’t go to conservatories either.
[00:27:05]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Great cantors of 50-60 years ago were lousy musicians. Most of them.
[00:27:11]
MARK SLOBIN: Nevertheless, they…
[00:27:12]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Never– they were gifted men. They were the vocal athletes of their time. They had a sense of style which they got either in the mother’s milk or they got as a Meshorerim in the old cities of Vilna and Lublin and Chistopol [sic] and so forth. You understand?
[00:27:35]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:27:35]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I don’t believe they got that in the conservatories.
[00:27:39]
MARK SLOBIN: No, they didn’t go to conservatories.
[00:27:40]
LAWRENCE AVERY: They didn’t conservatories. It was the rare one. The rare cantor was the one who was a good musician.
[00:27:46]
MARK SLOBIN: So that, in the sense, the decline of the Orthodox Cantor, it seemed to me, would be tied directly to the loss of Europe.
[00:27:52]
LAWRENCE AVERY: No question. To the loss of Europe, to the loss of…
[00:27:56]
MARK SLOBIN: That tradition of training…
[00:27:57]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Well, the decline of…
[00:28:00]
MARK SLOBIN: In other words, there’s no more breeding ground…
[00:28:01]
LAWRENCE AVERY: There’s no breeding ground.
[00:28:02]
MARK SLOBIN: …for Orthodox people.
[00:28:03]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Besides which–besides which–within the framework of the heavy, real, committed Orthodox community, less and less do they want to hear cantors.
[00:28:12]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah, that’s the other part, too.
[00:28:14]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Unless you go to Toronto, you know what I’m saying? They don’t want cantors. They would prefer the more do-it-yourself people. Uh, they are more concerned with getting through the service quickly.
[00:28:28]
MARK SLOBIN: Even the Orthodox?
[00:28:29]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Oh, of course. And the strong influence of if there is a Hasidic influence. And then the Hasidic, in the Hasidic community there, it’s have a Minyan at 8:00 and you finished at 9:30. So what the hell do you need a cantor for?
[00:28:43]
MARK SLOBIN: Well it’s a different ethos altogether.
[00:28:45]
LAWRENCE AVERY: It’s a different ethos altogether. And the music that might emerge from the Hasidic community is horrible anyhow.
[00:28:54]
MARK SLOBIN: So you don’t allow it in your service?
[00:28:57]
LAWRENCE AVERY: No, I don’t mean that. I don’t mean I don’t allow it. There may be–I’m very discriminating, I’m very selective in the music that I use. Actually, and somebody said that to me today, somebody who heard me daven recently for Passover, he said, “You have such a marvelous Hasidic style.” Okay. Partly because I daven with, or my style of davening, is with great exuberance and great, great feeling for the words and the authentic melos that are there. But I don’t like cheesy, hokey Hasidic melodies any more than I like the pseudo-neo-quasi Hasidic tunes that have come out of the land of Israel. I mean, one or two of them are good.
[00:29:54]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:29:55]
LAWRENCE AVERY: If you get one recording each year, you know, you get one number on them that’s decent, you know, because they’re all rehashed things. It’s all formula stuff.
[00:30:04]
MARK SLOBIN: Right. So yeah, in terms of Orthodoxy that’s…
[00:30:08]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Orthodoxy–Orthodoxy doesn’t promise us anything.
[00:30:10]
MARK SLOBIN: Right. So the future of the cantorate is going to have to be in the…
[00:30:14]
LAWRENCE AVERY: The future of the cantorate, if there is a future.
[00:30:17]
MARK SLOBIN: Well, that’s a question we have to get to.
[00:30:20]
LAWRENCE AVERY: The future of the cantorate… Are we alright on time?
[00:30:26]
MARK SLOBIN: Sure.
[00:30:26]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I think. Well, there are a couple of things that might guarantee its future. One, if we could seduce more people from Orthodox life who are, who have decent voices because without voices, forget it. And who have musical education.
[00:30:50]
MARK SLOBIN: Right.
[00:30:51]
LAWRENCE AVERY: By seduce them, I mean, if we can– get them away from the ghettoized communities and say, “Hey, look, you are educated, you must go to conservatory. You can still remain a Jew.”
[00:31:00]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:31:03]
LAWRENCE AVERY: That’s one. There were Hazzanim like that. There was, I mean, one of the finest examples was a fellow named Joseph Shlisky. An absolutely, dazzlingly beautiful tenor who was discovered in the sweatshops of Toronto. And somebody sent him to Montreal, to the conservatory. And when he was finished, he was ready to sing Rigoletto or La Boheme, but chose to be a hazzan, you see.
[00:31:28]
MARK SLOBIN: Yep. Yeah.
[00:31:29]
LAWRENCE AVERY: That’s one way. If we can get those people out. Because I don’t believe that you can go to the conservatories and take Joe Gold, the Jewish boy who has just finished four years in the conservatory, and say, “You know, you should really be a hazzan. You’ll never make it.”
[00:31:46]
MARK SLOBIN: But that’s, what I gather is that that’s what’s happening. Those Joe Golds are turning up–
[00:31:50]
LAWRENCE AVERY: And they’re saying, “I want to be a become a cantor.”
[00:31:52]
MARK SLOBIN: And the people who grew up with the tradition are not going into it.
[00:31:55]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yeah, that’s what I’ve been coping with or that’s what we’ve been coping with. That’s one thing. The problem being that you cannot legislate in four years. You cannot by any stretch of the imagination, in four or five years, indoctrinate, teach, osmose into a person that which I or Belfor or Spiro…
[00:32:26]
MARK SLOBIN: Right, which they should’ve grown up with. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:32:30]
LAWRENCE AVERY: It’s a terribly important thing. Those guys, those other cantors. Those from the golden age, so to speak. They grew up with it. They may not have been pious, but they came from Orthodox roots, you see. And all of that all that groundwork was laid.
[00:32:45]
MARK SLOBIN: Yes.
[00:32:45]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Even if some of them didn’t go to Yeshiva. I went to Yeshiva.
[00:32:49]
MARK SLOBIN: So one was, your first point was you should try to seduce those people. What was the second point?
[00:32:57]
LAWRENCE AVERY: The second point is that when the Jewish world or the Jewish community, the establishment, be it Orthodox, Conservative or Reform, begin to treat the cantor as a decent…As a person who deserves a decent remuneration. I mean, the reason a lot of people just never go to it is because they figure, “What the heck? I mean, I want a nice Jewish profession, like an accountant or a doctor.”
[00:33:28]
MARK SLOBIN: It pays as well as being a full professor, I can tell you.
[00:33:30]
LAWRENCE AVERY: That I know. That I know full well, you see. But so many of us cantors are moonlighting or doing double duty. Dozens of my colleagues from the HUC, people are teaching at universities, become high school teachers. Any number of people I know are doing two things. Show biz….I told you, public school teacher.
[00:34:02]
MARK SLOBIN: Now you get thrown out of the Cantor’s Assembly for doing that, right?
[00:34:04]
LAWRENCE AVERY: That’s what they say. But we know that people are fooling around, so to speak. They’re doing it. They’re doing it. That may be a very thin or veiled threat. But I’ve known I know a lot of guys who are lawyers. How about people who have a thriving law practice?
[00:34:24]
MARK SLOBIN: Really? I thought that wasn’t allowed.
[00:34:25]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Well, check it out. Check it out. Don’t say I said so. Now, what I’m saying is that when the Jewish community or the Jewish world says cantors should be paid the way, I don’t know, the way lawyers–no–the way rabbis.
[00:34:41]
MARK SLOBIN: Are rabbis paid a great deal more?
[00:34:44]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Of course they are.
[00:34:44]
MARK SLOBIN: What’s the average rate?
[00:34:44]
LAWRENCE AVERY: That isn’t to say that, that isn’t to say that there aren’t cantors who have made, who have made a very cushy job for themselves, but not too many. There isn’t a cantor around who doesn’t feel that he’s worth $20,000 more.
[00:34:57]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:34:58]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I am sure that the average salary for a rabbi is about $50,000, and the average salary for a cantor is probably 20 less maybe. Maybe there are, and I’m sure that there are cantors who are making $50,000 in places where the rabbis are making $75,000 do you understand? And no two people may have the same deal. Everybody’s got another deal. Everybody’s got his own little, his own little package, so to speak. But when, as with Jewish educators, I mean, why aren’t there people flocking to Jewish education? I mean, well I raised two fabulous daughters. One is a consultant to a fundraising firm and the other is a lawyer now. I wouldn’t dream of encouraging them to go into Jewish education because Jewish education doesn’t pay anything, and so too does, neither does the cantorate pay anything. My son-in-law’s in academia. That’s why my daughter is a lawyer, you see. My son-in-law’s a professor at Tulane University and my daughter just got her law degree.
[00:36:00]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:36:00]
LAWRENCE AVERY: They’ll have a happy life.
[00:36:02]
MARK SLOBIN: If they both keep their jobs, right.
[00:36:03]
LAWRENCE AVERY: If they both keep their– if they can both work in the same place.
[00:36:06]
MARK SLOBIN: This is what I go through. That’s my wife, anyway.
[00:36:09]
LAWRENCE AVERY: That’s not–that’s not easy.
[00:36:11]
MARK SLOBIN: Okay, so, wait, let me- [tape cuts out]
[00:36:15]
MARK SLOBIN: –music in the times you’ve had this job? I mean, in the time you’ve been teaching at HUC. I mean–what’s going to happen?
[00:36:19]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Okay, I’ve seen…Could I have a little drink? I’ve seen a little. I’ve seen the whole awful folk rock scene come and go, thank goodness. I’ve seen the Israeli bit. While they say ” Ki mitziyon tei-tzei Torah” (from out of Zion will come the Torah), that’s a myth. No Torah is coming from Israel, except maybe some research by people, by some musicologists. I’ve seen, the…. Oh, another great, great agony is that there are no composers. That there aren’t composers going into composing Jewish music.
[00:37:06]
MARK SLOBIN: But seems to be a lot of music turning up.
[00:37:08]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Well, one of the problems with traditional hazzanut, I’m not talking about–I’m not talking about composed pieces. I’m talking about the kind of hazzanut that’s improvised or done on the pulpit in an improvisational style. That has to–that simmers at a constant, should simmer at a constant level, at a certain traditional level and…I’m trying to make a point. And, it’s all folk music. I mean, it’s all modal and it’s all based on traditional phrases. So as long as it’s kept within the…As long as it’s kept within that framework so that it can remain steady. There have been very few innovators. There have been very few good composers who compose traditional style. Probably the most brilliant of all of them is this man, Ganchoff. There’s nobody else, nobody else today. In the realm of contemporary Jewish music that is accompanied, set pieces, more innovative, more creative. There have been the people like, starting in the forties, with names of Binder, Freed, Fromm, Helfman and so forth. And even they had their ups and downs. Some of them were good and some of the things that they wrote were pretty awful. I always make this point, and it always upsets people quite a bit. But it’s true, I think. That had they really been good composers, they never would have wound up in Jewish music. I mean, Isadore Freed wrote symphonies, but nobody ever knows anything about Isadore Freed’s symphonies. And if he had to make a living from the symphonies he wrote or the tone poems or the piano repertoire that he wrote, forget it.
[00:39:07]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:39:07]
LAWRENCE AVERY: So he made a contribution. He was great when it came to…
[00:39:12]
MARK SLOBIN: But we end up with lower-grade music.
[00:39:14]
LAWRENCE AVERY: So we, so what we’re ending up– and you see the legacy of Eastern European music and even Western European music that’s all printed and published, things like Nowakowski and Sulzer. I mean that’s probably the best. What we have is the best of it. And among that, there’s an awful lot of junk, awful lot of junk. I mean it’s…
[00:39:35]
MARK SLOBIN: Right. So you’re saying there’s not enough repertoire?
[00:39:38]
LAWRENCE AVERY: There never was enough good repertoire. I mean, if you heard what we heard this afternoon. The stuff that’s currently sung in Toronto, in a Contemporary Conservative synagogue, it was appalling. It was like the worst Donizetti, or the worst– I mean, it was Bellini at its worst.
[00:39:57]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah. Will tonight be the same kind of…?
[00:39:59]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I don’t know what you’re going to hear tonight.
[00:40:02]
MARK SLOBIN: Well, okay. So there’s a problem in repertoire is what you’re saying.
[00:40:05]
LAWRENCE AVERY: There’s a problem in repertoire–
[00:40:06]
MARK SLOBIN: But it’s a longstanding problem.
[00:40:07]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yes. Okay. There’s always been– Now, right now, there is a complete dearth.
[00:40:14]
MARK SLOBIN: There’s even less.
[00:40:14]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Even less, because the Godolim, the big ones, are dead. Binder is gone. Freed is gone. Piket is gone. Piket was a brilliant man who knew not a word of Hebrew even, but he was hungry.
[00:40:28]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:40:29]
LAWRENCE AVERY: And he was copying music. And somebody said, “Well, for God’s sakes, take a job as a choir leader in a Reform congregation in Flushing.” And he took the job and he says, “oh…”.
[00:40:41]
MARK SLOBIN: This goes back to the 19th century, though.
[00:40:41]
LAWRENCE AVERY: This goes to the forties and fifties.
[00:40:43]
MARK SLOBIN: I mean, you know. Yeah. You know guys who did that.
[00:40:45]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yes. Okay. Well, Piket did it. And wrote some stunning music. Now emerging in this day, with us today, Charlie Davidson, pretty good. Uh, there’s a guy out in Reed College in Oregon named David Schiff who is a brilliant composer. I don’t know if you know him.
[00:41:05]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah, yeah.
[00:41:05]
LAWRENCE AVERY: He’s just done, he wrote the opera Gimpel the Fool based on, based on–I was in that opera.
[00:41:11]
MARK SLOBIN: Oh were you? I guess I saw you then.
[00:41:11]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Did you see it?
[00:41:12]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah I saw it at the–
[00:41:12]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I played the part of the rabbi.
[00:41:14]
MARK SLOBIN: Oh, nice.
[00:41:15]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I was the guy who hopped around a lot.
[00:41:17]
MARK SLOBIN: That was nice. I liked it.
[00:41:17]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Oh, it was a brilliant work. He’s just written a sacred service for Friday night, which his synagogue commissioned. He wants money, you see. I mean, you got to do these things for money.
[00:41:29]
MARK SLOBIN: So there’s a problem with the repertoire.
[00:41:30]
LAWRENCE AVERY: There’s a problem with repertoire.
[00:41:32]
MARK SLOBIN: There’s a problem with the fads that come and go that you don’t like.
[00:41:33]
LAWRENCE AVERY: The fads, the fads come and go. Yeah, camp music, that hokey toe tapping songs.
[00:41:38]
MARK SLOBIN: And that, you kind of deal with in your congregation?
[00:41:39]
LAWRENCE AVERY: You deal with it. Well you deal with it. You can always inject one here or there and it’s nothing. Listen. Congregations want to sing.
[00:41:46]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:41:47]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Congregations want to participate more. Congregations want to listen less.
[00:41:51]
MARK SLOBIN: You think that’s bad?
[00:41:54]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I think that a successful cantor can make his congregation listen as my congregation listens.
[00:41:59]
MARK SLOBIN: Do you think that’s their job?
[00:42:02]
LAWRENCE AVERY: It’s really two thirds listening and one third– two thirds of the singing has to be done by the cantor who inspires them while they listen.
[00:42:13]
MARK SLOBIN: Is that because of the current situation? Or do you mean that in general? Because the old Orthodox congregation, everybody sang and the hazzan sang a little louder, you know.
[00:42:19]
LAWRENCE AVERY: No, no. The old Orthodox congregation, the cantor sang everything.
[00:42:22]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah, but everybody else sang along because they knew it all.
[00:42:24]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Okay. In my congregation–
[00:42:25]
MARK SLOBIN: [inaudible] sing a little bit higher, a little louder, do a little extra–
[00:42:27]
LAWRENCE AVERY: My congregation, they sing a good third of the time or good half of the time with me. But when I sing, when I get to my solo passages, it’s mine. And nobody says, “Oh, god, why is he singing so much?”
[00:42:42]
MARK SLOBIN: Okay, but you’re doing that because you want to evoke from them a certain kind of…Or evoke, within them, a certain response. Is that…?
[00:42:51]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I want to evoke response. I want to inspire them to pray. I want to establish the mood. I want to interpret the words of the liturgy for them through me. I am the vehicle, you see. I am the, in a sense..
[00:43:08]
MARK SLOBIN: The messenger?
[00:43:08]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I’m the Shaliach Tzibur–
[00:43:10]
MARK SLOBIN: Where’s the– this term fascinates me.
[00:43:13]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Okay, Shaliach Tzibur means “messenger of the common.”
[00:43:15]
MARK SLOBIN: I know what it means, but what is it, you know. What is the message? And the messenger from whom to whom?
[00:43:20]
LAWRENCE AVERY: The message is from the people, is from the people who, in general, are not educated. Are not capable, totally.
[00:43:30]
MARK SLOBIN: So it’s refining a message…
[00:43:31]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Because such is the format of the service says that the service has to be done that way. In other words, a group of people can pray by themselves. But when they pray in a group, there is a person who is delegated in case there may be as few as or as few as one person there who can’t do it for themselves. So he represents, you see. He represents the…
[00:43:54]
MARK SLOBIN: So he is carrying the message,
[00:43:55]
LAWRENCE AVERY: He is carrying the message.
[00:43:56]
MARK SLOBIN: In that sense to…Okay.
[00:43:56]
LAWRENCE AVERY: The old corny line. The rabbi carries God’s word to the people and the cantor carries the people’s word to God. How’s that?
[00:44:03]
MARK SLOBIN: But at the same time, if you are inspiring them…
[00:44:06]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yes, well they can pray along.
[00:44:07]
MARK SLOBIN: Then the message goes the other way. Then the…
[00:44:11]
LAWRENCE AVERY: A message comes to me. A message comes from me to them, inspires their prayers. But I still… it’s a kind of a magnificent interplay.
[00:44:22]
MARK SLOBIN: Well, this is what I’m really interested in.
[00:44:23]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Oh, sure.
[00:44:24]
MARK SLOBIN: You know, it’s a core concept. I mean it’s a basic thing that, you know…
[00:44:27]
LAWRENCE AVERY: It’s a very exciting and a very, very beautiful one. I’m not sure how many cantors really are turned on that way or feel the way I feel.
[00:44:37]
MARK SLOBIN: But it’s a cultural model. It’s an ideal and…
[00:44:38]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Oh, yes.
[00:44:39]
MARK SLOBIN: …It’s a very, very interesting one.
[00:44:40]
LAWRENCE AVERY: The cantor is, in a sense, a cultural model. He is a religious model. He is an ethic model. He is a model in his community. He has to have–he has to live a certain way. Not too many of our people do live that way, but…
[00:44:53]
MARK SLOBIN: Right. So that is also incumbent on…That’s part of the whole job.
[00:45:00]
LAWRENCE AVERY: You bet.
[00:45:00]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah, it’s a very complicated job.
[00:45:01]
LAWRENCE AVERY: It’s a complicated job. How many people…
[00:45:03]
MARK SLOBIN: Which is why it’s hard to get people to do it.
[00:45:05]
LAWRENCE AVERY: …How many people really meet all those requirements is yet another thing. If you start out the right way, if you come from the right roots…
[00:45:13]
MARK SLOBIN: Right.
[00:45:15]
LAWRENCE AVERY: If you have a little bit of feeling for it. The feeling… I don’t… You know, it’s the difference between one inspired artist and another inspired artist. Some person, one fiddle player is going to play technically gloriously. And another fiddle player is going to play with some kind of mysterious dimension that you can, that he has. He’s born with that.
[00:45:45]
MARK SLOBIN: And a hazzan has to have that?
[00:45:46]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Well, there are some hazzanim who are just technically very excellent. They say all the words, they sing all the notes, they do all the–they sing in the right modes, and they could be totally without heart.
[00:45:57]
MARK SLOBIN: So Nusach does not just mean that… What does Nusach mean?
[00:46:01]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Nusach means, in theory, Nusach means mold. It’s form. Nusach is a form.
[00:46:07]
MARK SLOBIN: Right.
[00:46:08]
LAWRENCE AVERY: It has a broader sense. The broader sense is a way of doing things. If I may interpret it that way. I don’t know if anybody’s defined it that way. Technically, your man on your list is a fellow named Boruch Cohen.
[00:46:22]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:46:23]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Have you interviewed him yet?
[00:46:24]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:46:24]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Phenomenal man. And he has a great feeling and understanding of that.
[00:46:29]
MARK SLOBIN: So the notion of a way of doing things is an interesting one. It gets close to being a Minhag to me. In some of it’s– the overlap with those two interests me too.
[00:46:39]
LAWRENCE AVERY: A Minhag? A custom?
[00:46:45]
MARK SLOBIN: Well I’m talking about a way of doing things.
[00:46:45]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yeah.
[00:46:47]
MARK SLOBIN: It’s a local way. Which brings me….
[00:46:48]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yes. Yes. Okay. Right. I’ll buy that. Yes. Very good. Because I wrote down on my program today when I heard what I thought was outrageously poor taste, I wrote down Nusach Toronto.
[00:47:01]
MARK SLOBIN: Okay, well, there you are.
[00:47:02]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Okay. Nusach New Rochelle or Minhag Toronto, if you will. I’ll go along with you. Minhag New Rochelle and if you wanted to hear Minhag Flushing or if you wanted to hear Minhag bab– excuse me–Babylon? Jericho.
[00:47:16]
MARK SLOBIN: Well, in that case, though, how can you define poor taste if there are local understandings? And you’ve injected relativism…
[00:47:25]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I, alright okay. Poor taste, I have music, I have very high musical standards. I am an educated, sophisticated, high-thinking musician. That’s my point. And if I can’t–if I don’t hear a musical line shaped beautifully, I don’t care whether it’s shaped by a Bel Canto singer or by a hazzan, then forget it.
[00:47:50]
MARK SLOBIN: See, you’re introducing another principle, which is an aesthetic.
[00:47:53]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yes, to me…
[00:47:55]
MARK SLOBIN: Does this have to do with this notion of Hiddur Mitzvah? Which is another term…
[00:47:59]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I never thought of it that way.
[00:48:00]
MARK SLOBIN: It’s another term I’m interested in.
[00:48:01]
LAWRENCE AVERY: I never–I never thought of it that way. I never thought of Hiddur Mitzvah. No, no. I just have my high standards. That’s why in my personal life…Listen, am I paying you for this session, this psychotherapy? That’s why I perhaps never had great respect for my father as a hazzan.
[00:48:24]
MARK SLOBIN: Oh because he didn’t have the…
[00:48:24]
LAWRENCE AVERY: He was not a musician.
[00:48:26]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah.
[00:48:26]
LAWRENCE AVERY: He…All he did was…He was an imitator. So if he could imitate in one piece, he would imitate Rosenblatt. Another piece he would imitate Hershman. Another piece he would imitate so-and-so. He never evolved.
[00:48:37]
MARK SLOBIN: Okay.
[00:48:37]
LAWRENCE AVERY: The style of Louis Cohen, you see. But I have my style. I have my style, which is based on 35 years of singing–of singing in the cantorate. Preceded by maybe a good 15 years of musical education.
[00:49:00]
MARK SLOBIN: Now have you done any records or stuff that I could hear? Because I would like to hear you sing.
[00:49:03]
LAWRENCE AVERY: You mean you want to hear what I sound like?
[00:49:06]
MARK SLOBIN: Sure.
[00:49:06]
LAWRENCE AVERY: My own, the only commercial record I ever– two commercial records. I’m on a recording of Judas Maccabeus, which was recorded…
[00:49:14]
MARK SLOBIN: That’s different.
[00:49:14]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Which was recorded in…
[00:49:16]
MARK SLOBIN: That’s a different Nusach.
[00:49:16]
LAWRENCE AVERY: …Which was recorded in Vienna with Jan Peerce and Martina Arroyo. And then I did a recording of The Student Prince with Franz Allers and Roberta Peters and Giorgio Tozzi and Jan Peerce also… In hazzanut, I don’t have anything with me, of course.
[00:49:32]
MARK SLOBIN: No, but if you, I’d like…
[00:49:33]
LAWRENCE AVERY: If you ever wanted to hear anything that I’ve done…
[00:49:37]
MARK SLOBIN: If you want to send stuff, I’m interested in hearing…
[00:49:37]
LAWRENCE AVERY: This fellow who’s doing all the taping, Abe Levitt, have you…do you know who he is?
[00:49:42]
MARK SLOBIN: No.
[00:49:42]
LAWRENCE AVERY: He’s always walking around with the headphones and so forth. He did a tape for me. I was the principal soloist, the tenor soloist with a group that existed for about five or six years called Mu– Cantica Hebraica. And we did a series of stunning concerts all around the New York area, ranging from Boston to Philadelphia and so forth. And we sang at Tully Hall and we sang it at Avery Fisher Hall and all over. And I recorded– he has many live tapes of me singing hazzanut, ranging from accompanied with orchestra, unaccompanied solos.
[00:50:18]
MARK SLOBIN: I would like to..
[00:50:19]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yeah. So there are things.
[00:50:20]
MARK SLOBIN: Could you make it out to me because…
[00:50:21]
LAWRENCE AVERY: You’d like a copy, you’d like to hear what I sound like.
[00:50:24]
MARK SLOBIN: I’m trying to get an education in my ear–
[00:50:25]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Of what…
[00:50:26]
MARK SLOBIN: –and it’s very hard to get–
[00:50:27]
LAWRENCE AVERY: …what I sound like.
[00:50:27]
MARK SLOBIN: –a lot of stuff to listen to. It isn’t so easy, you know?
[00:50:28]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Okay. All right. Okay.
[00:50:30]
MARK SLOBIN: Uh, and, you know, I’d be interested in your kind of approach. Well, the last question then.
[00:50:36]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Okay.
[00:50:37]
MARK SLOBIN: Because we do have to go to dinner. Is–
[00:50:39]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Remember, we made it!
[00:50:40]
MARK SLOBIN: Yeah. Is there a Nusach America or a Minhag America? Is there something you had to– I’m dealing with the American cantorate. Is there a way to define it as being American?
[00:50:50]
LAWRENCE AVERY: Yes, there is a Nusach of Minhag–Minhag America is a synthesis of Eastern Europe, a little bit of Western Europe, a smidgen of some of these pop, folk, Israeli things. There’s…I mean, the fact that somewhere in my service I may hum [sings part of Oseh Shalom]. Just as a little bit of a theme because I know that the Amidah’s ending and I may hum that. But I don’t, I mean, we don’t sing Oseh Shalom at the end of Kaddish or anything like that. Do you see what I’m saying? A Minhag America has got to be a synthesis of several styles. Based largely on Eastern European traditions, taking the best from all these things. Influenced by time parameters, by community tastes….
[00:51:56]
MARK SLOBIN: Oh sure. Well that’s part of what a Minhag is.
[00:51:58]
LAWRENCE AVERY: …By some of the people who I hope will be inspired to write music for us these days, you see. And I do everything I can to inspire people. If I hadn’t inspired David Schiff, he never would have become involved in Jewish music, you see. Incidentally, he just wrote the book, you know, on Elliott Carter.
[00:52:19]
MARK SLOBIN: Right.
[00:52:19]
LAWRENCE AVERY: It was reviewed about a week ago, so. I mean, there’s a guy as sophisticated a musician as you could want who says, “Hey, I can deal with cantelation modes and write an exquisite service that may rival Milhaud or Bloch.” I like it better than the Bloch.
[00:52:37]
MARK SLOBIN: Good, well, it’s…[cuts off]
TRANSCRIPTION END
This audio interview is part of the “History of the American Cantorate” project, which was designed and executed by Mark Slobin in 1984-86 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded to the Cantors Assembly, a professional society.
The recording of this interview is provided through a partnership with the American Cantorate Project.
Additional interviews in this collection are available on the Center’s Aviary account.