Yesterday was one of the most exhausting but satisfying days of the year. For the 8th time, I played Yom Kippur services at Toronto's Temple Sinai in the second sanctuary with Cantor Katie Oringel (and joined by violinist Joseph Peleg playing Kol Nidrei on Friday evening). The services require a lot of playing from score, playing from chord symbols, as well as transposing, and I've become quite adept at the difficult task of following the flow of the service, music, cue sheets, and Machzor simultaneously.
Some of the most moving moments of the entire Yom Kippur cycle are in the Yizkor service, which happens in the afternoon before the concluding Ne'ilah. One of the settings that I find particularly memorable is the Gerald Cohen's Psalm 23, performed in the video below by Rowna Sutin at Pittsburgh's Rodef Shalom Congregation in 2008:
Tomorrow it's back to rehearsals at Tapestry for Opera Briefs 10, which opens this Thursday. Stay tuned...
