Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey and Steve Carell are just some of the celebrated entertainers who got their big starts with the Second City, the Chicago-based sketch comedy and improv troupe.
The group’s touring company will perform at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation on May 11 when presenting “The Best of the Second City,” a comedy revue featuring songs, skits and improvisations from the troupe’s 52-year history.
The performance is part of the Pikesville congregation’s seventh annual “Night of the Stars,” a fundraising event benefiting BHC’s youth education programming, including the E.B. Hirsh Early Childhood Center.
The event will honor BHC’s retiring cantor of nine years, Robbie Solomon, and his wife, Helen.
According to Richard Peterson, chair of the event’s planning committee, Cantor Solomon has touched the lives of congregants of all ages.
“My granddaughter’s favorite song is “Shabbat Shalom,” and she learned it here at E.B. Hirsch,” he said. “Whenever she’s upset, she starts singing ‘Shabbat Shalom, hey!’ and claps her hands as [the preschool students] do with Cantor Solomon, and right away she snaps out of it. I come every Friday night and I’m disappointed when he’s not there. The cantor is going to be sorely missed.”
Born and raised in Baltimore, Cantor Solomon, 69, attended City College High School. He pursued a science degree at Gettysburg College, but his true passions lay in music and religion. After college, he continued his studies at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem, the Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory.
In 1974, Cantor Solomon co-founded the popular Jewish musical ensemble Safam, which has produced 15 albums and toured around the world.
“I realized music was so integral to what I did,” says Cantor Solomon. “It was inevitable that I would be in some kind of musical profession. And I value the idea of being a cantor because a lot of musicians struggle to make a living and they go from gig to gig. [Being] a cantor, it’s just more fulfilling because you’re also out there helping people. Music takes on another dimension.”
Of his many musical achievements, Cantor Solomon said he is particularly proud of his 1979 composition “Leaving Mother Russia,” which was written in support of the hundreds of thousands of Jews attempting to immigrate from the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.
“[The song] became an anthem for the Soviet Jewry movement, which probably was the last time, or only time, that the entire Jewish community came together for just one cause,” says Cantor Solomon.
In addition to “Leaving Mother Russia,” over the course of his career Cantor Solomon has written more than 100 songs. A highlight of his tenure at BHC was the performance of “The Orphan Queen,” his original musical based on the biblical story of Esther.
Cantor Solomon joined the clergy at BHC in 2008 to be closer to his father, who lives at North Oaks Retirement Community in Pikesville. The position was also appealing to the cantor because of his Baltimore roots.
“[Baltimore’s] a unique community. It’s very big and active,” Cantor Solomon said. “I’m able to bring out a lot of [songs and prayers] that I knew as a child, and people respond to them because that’s what they knew as children.”
To be successful chazzan, Cantor Solomon says one needs both musical aptitude and a sense of compassion.
“You have to have a decent voice, you have to want to help people, and engage and bring people to a better state of being and be calm enough to deal with the vagaries of the job,” he says. “There’s teaching, there’s planning, there’s meetings, there’s programs, there’s visiting people in the hospital. One of the things about [being] clergy is that you’re on call all the time. If you’re needed, you have to go.”
Most of all, Cantor Solomon says he will miss his role in the spiritual lives of his congregants.
Post-retirement, he says he will move to Boston, where he plans on spending more time with children and grandchildren, volunteering, songwriting and performing with Safam.
The cantor says he hope he will be remembered at BHC for “creating a wonderful musical legacy in the services and creating different liturgical service opportunities, leaving the place in really good shape with all the forces that we developed over the years.”
Baltimore Hebrew Congregation’s “Night of the Stars” will be held on Thursday, May 11. A cocktail and light supper reception will be held from 6-7:30 p.m. The show begins at 8 p.m. For tickets and information, visit baltimorehebrew.org.
Top photo: The Second City Blue Company Traveling Group © Todd Rosenberg 2015
Jolene Carr is a Baltimore-based freelance writer.
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