8/23/2023 0 Comments Harmony nails warm springsThere was another occasion where Natalie joined her family singing at the Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre. “One of the most magnificent experiences for me was to sit in the Baxter Theatre and see my gran, my mom, her two sisters, and my two daughters all singing in Yiddish together on stage,” she recalls. It was also a special way of connecting to my heritage and ancestry.”īarnett’s mother and Naomi’s daughter, Natalie Barnett, have also been touched by music. “Seeing Aviva performing it live on stage through musical theatre was a big moment that spoke to me about what I wanted to do with my life. “I grew up listening to these stories from my great granny, Santa, and from my grandmother, Naomi,” Barnett says. Her grandmother, great aunts, and especially Santa’s Story had a particular impact on her. Naomi’s granddaughter, Barnett is a passionate actress and singer who recently penned her own musical, a three-women show titled Feeling Pretty, soon to be performed in Cape Town. Indeed, one of the many performers Pelham has influenced is her great niece, Ariella Barnett (25). Hopefully through my singing, directing, mentoring, and teaching, I have inspired others through music.” It gives me enormous joy when my family take pleasure in music. There was my mom on the screen, and my son, Adam, and his daughter, Noa, alongside me onstage. In Sydney, I had four generations singing simultaneously. We filmed it so that after she passed away, it was still on the screen behind me as an encore. “My mother herself used to come onstage in her 90s and sing for the encore – people were so moved. Having built an illustrious opera career, Pelham used music to convey her mother’s fascinating life story through her acclaimed musical, Santa’s Story, which she performed internationally. It was very natural, our voices resonated with one another.” Although, as adults, the sisters have long lived in different cities, they remain bonded by music, rehearsing telephonically and performing together whenever possible. “We used to sing in the car, at picnics, at Shabbos, at lunch. “There would be two of us playing piano duets from different sides of the house and there was always a lot of singing and harmonising,” Pelham says. This passion, particularly for opera and Yiddish songs, was passed on to the couple’s three daughters. There was always music in the house, and my mother had a stupendous voice.” “These two strangers lived a 63-year marriage, and the things that glued them together were yiddishkeit, the fact that they were both casualties of war situations, and music,” says Pelham. It started with their parents, Santa and Jack, who knew one another only through letters before becoming engaged. A thread that weaves its way through different generations, a powerful way to connect and express ourselves creatively, music has been a unifying force in numerous talented families.įor renowned opera singer, Aviva Pelham (73), some of her best memories are of performing with her sisters, Naomi and Ruth, also talented singers.
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