Grandfather’s cantorial CD release inspires jazz singer

One song was all it took to change Sophie Berkal- Sarbit’s life.

The now 19-year-old jazz sensation was just 10 when she was preparing for an international music festival in New York. She sang folk music and was involved with musical theatre at the time, but on her father’s recommendation, she performed Angel Eyes, made famous by jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald.

“I fell in love with the song and style and haven’t gone back since,” Berkal-Sarbit says.

She was 16 years old when she released her first album, The Gypsy in My Soul. Her followup album was released on Valentine’s Day this year and is called Young and Foolish. Both albums contain Berkal-Sarbit’s covers of famous jazz tracks.

She opened the Beaches International Jazz Festival in Toronto on July 16, where she performed an original song, Just Us. Songwriting, she says, is a skill she’s just starting to get into.

She has performed at this festival every year since 2006 as part of the group the Real Divas, but this is the first time she got her own show – on opening night, no less.

“I’m really excited and honoured to have that,” Berkal-Sarbit says.

She describes percussion as something she loves to incorporate into her shows. Not drums, she specifies, but other percussive instruments such as bongos.

“I’d love to learn that [percussion] myself, but I don’t have any time,” she says.

Her album pushes the envelope for a jazz CD, as she performs material that is not jazz – for example, Until by Sting and Grandma’s Hands by Bill Withers – but transforms the songs into Latin jazz or ballads with different arrangements.

She has worked with jazz musicians who incorporate their own styles into music from other genres, and she says she is following their example. She also credits the approach to working with her producer, Bill King, who helped her arrange the tracks.

King says Berkal-Sarbit’s voice is unique in that it truly connects with people, and he describes it as having a softness to it.

“She has a great rhythm to her singing,” he says, attributing it to her exposure to jazz music while she was growing up and developing as a vocalist.

Being in the studio is probably her favourite thing to do, Berkal-Sarbit says, as she expertly describes the recording process, in which she decides on a theme and picks songs that flow into each other to create a cohesive album.

She records herself singing with the band initially and then redoes the vocals separately, she says.

She calls her grandfather, Rabbi Louis Berkal, her biggest inspiration. He was a rabbi and a cantor at the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue in Winnipeg, and released his first cantorial music CD at the age of 87.

“After I found out he was recording a CD, it made me want to record one, too,” she said. “He really taught me never to give up and to always go for my dreams.”

Her grandfather was born in a shtetl in Lithuania and moved to Canada when he was 13. He went to Grand Forks, N.D., to study to become a rabbi and a cantor. He met her grandmother there, and the two of them moved to Winnipeg.

Her grandfather was at Shaarey Zedek Synagogue for more than 50 years, and he died last year at 95 years old.

Winnipeg is Berkal-Sarbit’s hometown, though she moved to Toronto last year to study at a makeup school, where she specialized in special effects and prosthetics, a hobby that she says has always been one of her interests.

But don’t expect to see any of it at her shows.

“I think I would scare my audience,” she says, laughing. Although her youth attracts a younger audience, jazz still generally appeals to an older crowd, Berkal-Sarbit says.

She says it’s an interesting experience being a young jazz singer. While it was difficult to keep up with the workload in high school due to her career commitments, her friends were supportive, she says, adding that they all had tickets to her Beaches Jazz Festival performance.

It’s also nice to be different, she says.

“I get to meet so many interesting people, and I always get different reactions from people when they find out I’m a jazz singer,” she says.

In the future, Berkal-Sarbit says she wants to spend time writing more music with her producer.

“I love, love, love writing with [him], and we work really well together,” she says.

King says her first original song, Just Us, turned out amazing, and he plans on helping her write more songs in the future.

“When she does it live in concert, it’s the most successful song in the set,” he says. “It doesn’t sound like the jazz tunes. It sounds like her.”

And if Berkal-Sarbit could collaborate with any other musicians, she would choose fellow Canadian jazz singers Holly Cole and Emilie- Claire Barlow.

Berkal-Sarbit is also hoping to tour in support of Young and Foolish, and has been thinking of basing the tour around Jewish community centres. She performed as part of the Real Divas at the Stars on Spadina concert at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre last April .

Although Judaism doesn’t necessarily directly affect her music – and the Jewish aspect to her life was more prominent in Winnipeg than Toronto – many of her fans admired her grandfather, who does play a significant role in her music.

“I definitely talk a lot about my grandfather in my shows,” she says.

Catch Berkal-Sarbit on tour when she performs at the Reservoir Lounge in Toronto on Sept. 28. For more information and tour dates, visit www.sophieberkalsarbit.com.

Originally published in The Canadian Jewish News.