When Noam Aviel began her quest for a career in music, the conductor’s podium wasn’t an end point she’d considered.
Noam was a singer and jazz was her music. Classical music didn’t enter her picture until her late teens when she studied with classical singers to bolster her jazz singing skills.
The teenage jazz hopeful is now an acclaimed conductor praised for the energy and passion she brings to the role. She has worked with orchestras from Iceland to South Africa. In September, she assumed the role of music director for Symphony in C, a young professionals orchestra preparing musicians for careers in music. The orchestra is based in Collingswood, N.J., near Philadelphia, where Noam now lives.
“I had my audition program with them in January,” Noam said. “We performed Symphonie fantastique by Berlioz and it was an incredible experience, just the amount of energy and power.
“These musicians are extremely motivated, very talented, and very energetic and passionate about classical music,” Noam said. “To make music with such a group is a wonderful experience.”
She will make her Straz Center debut in March, conducting Opera Tampa’s production of Hansel and Gretel. Noam will be the first woman to conduct an Opera Tampa performance. She has a bit of a history with the opera, having sung the role of Hansel as an undergraduate.
Instantly recognizable in her trademark red-framed eyeglasses, Noam is celebrated for both the enthusiasm she generates as a conductor, and for her deep understanding of the nuances of different musical styles such as symphonic, opera and jazz.
Noam acknowledges that her path to the podium “was not a very typical route.” But her not very typical route produced a versatile conductor capable of drawing out the best in musicians and singers.
As a child growing up in Israel, Noam loved to sing. She joined a children’s choir and enjoyed listening to Israeli singer-songwriter Chava Alberstein.
“One of the things I really connected with was that she was a storyteller,” Noam said. “I think everything that has to do with music and the arts in general is telling stories.”
What Noam calls her “deep musical education” began when she was accepted into the jazz program at the arts high school she attended. At the school, she “fell in love with the bass,” which she played in her school’s big band, even traveling to New York City to perform at the International Association for Jazz Education conference.
It was here that classical music entered Noam’s orbit.
“When I was a child, I don’t think I was ready,” Noam said. “Classical music felt very foreign to me.”
Gaining “life experiences” was what “brought me closer to classical music,” Noam said.
“It shows that you can fall in love with classical music at any age,” Noam said.
She was accepted into the vocal department of Tel Aviv University. It was here that she became enthralled with the role of the conductor. It led to a revelation for Noam: “I just knew that conducting was the best way for me to express music, that it fit me exactly – my personality and my passion.”
A performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony was a turning point for Noam. She was part of the choir singing with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, which she described as “a powerful experience.”
“It was one of the first times that I got to work and be close to an orchestra of such a high level,” Noam recalls. “I remember looking down at the podium and seeing Maestro Zubin Mehta conducting, hearing the enormous and beautiful sound coming from the orchestra and thinking to myself that conducting is something I would really like to do!”
Noam earned bachelor’s degrees in both voice and conducting from Tel Aviv University. She came to the U.S. in 2014 to study orchestral conducting at Illinois State University, earning her master’s in 2016. Her next move was to Texas, where she was assistant conductor for Opera San Antonio before being named associate conductor of the San Antonio Symphony in 2017.
Along with her conducting duties, Noam was active in the symphony’s community outreach projects. She was praised for her innovative programming, which she said was driven by her dedication to reaching the community.
“We were trying to make the music more accessible to the audience,” Noam said. For example, in a program of Star Wars composer John Williams’ music, Noam would include classical works that influenced Williams’ scores.
Noam sought “creative ways of touching the audience and making the music more appealing.” Being involved in and understanding the community is vital, Noam said. She’s already involving herself in the community around Symphony in C.
“Being a music director is a big responsibility, and one of the things that I love about it is that I become part of the community,” Noam said. In her first weeks on the job she met with several community groups to tour the orchestra and its place in the community.
“We collect our audience from each performance or each talk,” Noam said. “It’s something that I love – communicating with people both verbally and through music. It fits me.”
Hansel and Gretel in Pop Culture
Hansel and Gretel’s plot points – famine, child abandonment, cannibalism – suggest horror movie more than children’s fable.
Filmmakers agree, and horror fans can choose from several movies based on the tale, from a widely-praised 2007 Hansel and Gretel by South Korean director Yim Pil-sung to 2013’s Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, starring Jeremy Renner, who must have lost a bet. Hansel vs. Gretel (2015) finds sister in thrall to evil witches, while Gretel & Hansel (2020) creates an eerie atmosphere a la The VVitch.
Tim Burton made his 1983 short film, Hansel and Gretel, for The Disney Channel, which screened it exactly once. It’s not horror, but it’s creepy and kind-of charming and very low-budget.
The fable is played for laughs In Hansel & Gretel Get Baked, where a witch lures victims with treats other than sweets. Bugs Bunny frees the children and battles the witch in Bewitched Bunny (1954), while a 2000 The Simpsons spoof saw Bart and Lisa rescued by a gingerbread wall-devouring Homer.