By Leon Cohen
of The Chronicle staff
Musicians often have ambivalent feelings about conductors, who are the bosses in any large ensemble. Rare is the conductor who has the combination of musical knowledge and charisma that inspires musicians to put forth their best efforts willingly.
The Milwaukee Jewish Community Chorale may have found such a conductor, according to its officials. His name is Pavel Roytman, and he has been the music director since September.
The community at large will get to meet him on Sunday, Dec. 8, 3 p.m. That’s when he will direct the chorale’s sixth annual Chanukah concert, to be held at Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue in Mequon. Admission is free.
Chorale president Sharon Fedderly described Roytman as a “very gifted” musician and a conductor who “has high standards, and presents them in a way that makes us want to work harder.”
And as chorale associate director Enid Bootzin said, Roytman “has the kind of personality that makes people want to work with him. [At rehearsals] he lets everyone know that we’re there for business, yet we can have a relaxed atmosphere as long as we do what we need to do.”
Roytman, 30, was born and trained in the former Soviet Union. In a telephone interview from his home in the Chicago area, he said he showed talent as a child and was educated in the music specialty schools.
Initially, he studied piano and thought about becoming a jazz musician. Moreover, when “things started opening up” in the late 1980s before the Soviet Union finally dissolved, Roytman formed a klezmer band.
But “I’ve always liked singing, ever since I was a kid” and he had been in choirs since he was six. “I thought choral conducting would be a good path for me,” and he made that his major. Moreover, he sang during his klezmer performances, and from learning that repertoire “I fell in love with Jewish music.”
After moving to Chicago in 1994, he pursued further academic study in music and began private cantorial study. He is now music director at Temple Beth Israel in Skokie and will soon be embarking on the Reform movement’s cantorial certification program. He apparently has a growing reputation in the Chicago area, and it was through Bootzin’s contacts there that she heard of him and invited him to consider the Milwaukee chorale.
Roytman said that his tenure with the chorale “is going great and it is a wonderful group of people. Everyone has been very helpful and I think they have huge potential.” He said he has worked with Chicago’s Jewish community choir Kol Zimra and “I think something like that could be developed in Milwaukee” with the chorale.
The concert will feature the 35-member chorale plus members of other synagogue adult choirs, a children’s choir combined from area synagogues and the Milwaukee Jewish Day School, plus all the Milwaukee area cantors. Bootzin and Roytman also will sing solo selections.
The repertoire will include “traditional and contemporary Chanukah music,” according to Fedderly, including “a Jewish gospel-like number.” Refreshments will be served afterward.
For more information about the concert or the chorale, call Donna Neubauer, chorale vice president, 414-354-5961.
Pavel Roytman leading a Milwaukee Jewish Community Chorale rehearsal.
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