MONTREAL — It’s the fulfilment of a long-held dream. As part of its 165th anniversary celebration, Congregation Shaar Hashomayim is launching a much-anticipated debut CD on May 22 that showcases the shul’s renowned men’s choir and cantor, Gideon Zelermyer, under musical director Stephen Glass.
Stephen Glass conducts the Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue Choir, with cantor Gideon Zelermyer.
The CD’s title – The Music of the Shaar – gives no indication of the amount of effort and the number of hours put into capturing the almost transformative musical experience the Shaar a cappella choir is known for on a simple, four-inch disc.
For that, said Glass and Zelermyer, who have worked together closely since 2004, it took the collaboration of one of the world’s best-known sound recording engineers, McGill University’s Martha de Francisco.
De Francisco, who has been responsible for classical recordings on the Philips label, was approached in 2010 by CBC broadcaster Kelly Rice, who had taken part in a special Shaar tribute to the late opera star Richard Tucker that involved the choir. Rice encouraged de Francisco to hear them.
A CD comprised of “Shaar music” had also been a longtime dream of an enthusiastic fan, the synagogue’s Margot Lande, who made it clear that she would gladly be a principal sponsor. About 90 other “patrons” so far have also stepped forward to support the endeavour, Glass said.
“There was a grassroots movement,” Glass said. “For so long, people were asking Gideon and me when we would be finally doing a CD [of Shaar music], that it was about time.”
Zelermyer said there has been a growing “passion to share the music with a larger audience, so this is really a dream come true.”
De Francisco, who is not Jewish, was “astounded” when she heard the choir, Glass said, and insisted that it record its planned CD using the full resources of McGill’s state-of-the-art recording studio at the Schulich School of Music, a soundproof facility also used for recordings by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.
The choir, Zelermyer and Glass have performed together outside the city, including in Ottawa, the Catskill mountains, Florida and London, England, but this is their first CD.
The project presented several challenges.
At a technical level, it had to use the studio in a way that recreated the quality of the rich, rounded, harmonic sound of the choir and Zelermyer’s majestic, lyric tenor voice.
Another was to highlight as much as possible the qualities that define the essence of the Shaar choir. Unlike earlier recordings of cantorial music, Zelermyer noted, the Shaar CD has no instrumental accompaniment, just the authentic, pure sound of voices blending together in perfect, resonant harmony to convey the music’s religious depth and soul and truly engage the listener.
“Martha spent a lot of time in the synagogue, and she called it the ‘holy sound,’” Glass said.
The CD also incorporates Glass’s unique arrangements, which have been widely hailed for seamlessly and ingeniously incorporating traditional and modern musical motifs. Listen closely, and you might detect Michel Legrand, or even John Williams. The CD’s liner notes describe the sound as “imbu[ing] the liturgy with a sense of freshness.”
The last challenge was to select the tracks from the liturgical repertoire. The first CD is Volume 1 of a planned series of up to six CDs, and a decision was made to make the first one a “potpourri,” Glass said. One of the selections will be one of the most popular with congregants, L’dor V’dor, from the Shabbat service.
Completing the CD took 24 hours of studio time over “seven or eight” sessions, Glass and Zelermyer said. Plans are to sell the CD within the synagogue community and beyond, including through iTunes and on Amazon websites.
At the end, as the choir’s 13 members, Glass, Zelermyer and de Francisco crowded together in the recording booth to listen, the visceral reaction could not be suppressed.
“I have to say, there were tears on some of the faces,” Glass said.
