Lifestyle/Community
Not your common garden variety chazzanut
Lawyer by day, cantor on Shabbos and Jewish festivals, Elton Krawitz has put a new slant on Jewish liturgical music. It is still chazzanut – but with a difference.
SUZANNE BELLING
PHOTOGRAPH: SHIBOLET FELSHER
Johannesburg music lovers will be treated to this new genre of traditional music (without losing the essence of tradition) in “Anything… But Cantorial” at the Auto and General Theatre on the Square, Sandton, on Sunday, June 28 at two shows 15:00 and 19:00. Hatzolah Medical Rescue is a beneficiary of this event.
Krawitz, who is the chazzan at Waverley Shul, has teamed up with renowned pianist Bryan Schimmel and the Waverley Choir under the baton of choirmaster Joel Sacher.
Krawitz’s repertoire will be a departure from his usual public singing and promises to be an exciting prospect “both for the audience and for me”, he says.
“The show will feature some of my favourite artists and composers, with five-part harmonies. This is not classical cantorial,’’ Krawitz told Jewish Report. “There will be music from Broadway, Les Miserables, Michael Buble, Elton John and my favourite – Andrea Bocelli.”
Schimmel, no stranger to the South African music scene, with a reputation as a brilliant showman, will accompany the singers.
Krawitz, who originally hails from the East Rand, attended the Hillel Jewish day school in Benoni till the end of grade 10 when the school closed down.
“I then went to King David High School Linksfield, commuting every day until my parents (Dr Walter and Natalie Krawitz) moved to Johannesburg.”
Krawitz has a BA LlB degree and practises as an in-house attorney for Discovery Health. His musical talent came to the fore in his youth when he studied piano (“I wrote all the exams”) and went on to have voice training with Eugene Chopin. “I was also helped a lot by Evelyn Green, accompanist for the Johannesburg Jewish Male Choir.”
He was a member of the JJMC, travelling with the choir on tours to the United States (twice) and Perth and Melbourne. He joined the Victory Park Synagogue as a cantor from 1997 for two years and was then chazzan at Chabad of Sandton from 1999 to 2004, when he was appointed by Waverley Shul and has been there ever since.
He does not find it particularly taxing to work all week and sing on Friday nights and Saturday mornings. “I don’t even find Yom Kippur a strain, but strangely feel Rosh Hashanah is the most taxing.”
In 2008, with Michael Hankinson, he recorded an album “Inflections”.
“We took classical cantorial music and recorded with an 11-piece chamber orchestra.” After adapting their style of music for weddings, Krawitz recorded another album, “Wedding Inflections”, with an eight-piece chamber orchestra.
He is one of the regular performers for the Chazzonus Club and sings at West Park Cemetery for Yom Hashoah.
His wife, Carmel, is a remedial teacher. They have four children aged between seven and 14.
“We are changing the sound of shul music. We work in five-part harmonies. It is not the stuff you usually hear, not classical cantorial,” Krawitz remarked.