In the coming week, the whole country is about to talk, once again, about Noa Kirel when she conquers another career peak and takes to the Eurovision stage in Liverpool. The person who is close to Noa at the pouch level, and will be by her side there as well, is her vocal mentor and mentor, and that of many other singers, Naama Levy-Ofek.
"Noa came to me at the age of 17," she says, "and today I think that every singer should have a little 'Noa Kirl.' She's a unicorn, supernatural."
How does your work with her manifest itself?
"I actually did the adaptation with her of coming out of the singer who only sang on tape and full playback to sing live. A singer she was from the beginning, I gave her the confidence to sing. You have to get 'flight hours' of vocal work to feel the 'singer'. She said that one of the things that scared her the most was singing, because everything else she has big time, and I kept telling her it would happen, and it really happens amazing."
Eurovision is one song, but how do you prepare for an hour-and-forty-minute performance in Yarkon Park in front of an audience?
"We worked hard to get her heard, like singing while running on a running device. All the skeptics who came to the park had to see this thing, the first time Noa Kirl live, and she dropped everyone's jaw with her singing. Sings like an animal."
Do you think she's the best singer in the country?
"It's not a fair question — she's the best at what she does."
So Europe is going to discover it in a big way?
"Totally. She's a singer of a different magnitude in a competition like this as well."
"The best at what she does." With Noa Kirel preparing for Eurovision, photo: Eran Levy
Do you like "Unicorn"?
"I really like the song. The first time I heard it was in the rehearsal room, three weeks before everyone else, and it was secret like in the Pentagon, you can't release anything, and of course they didn't play the song to anyone. I said, 'Send it to me,' and they refused. Noa came to class and I told her: Put on play already, put on play, and when I heard it I said - wow!
"When we were working on the song, I told her not to go to the extremes. For example, not to sing in the lowest or highest voice, but to have an impressive, large and clear vocal range. I told her, 'You don't have to have it easy, but you have to be confident in what you're doing. Not to get to a performance that doesn't make sense later on live.'"
"My body blocked me"
Noa Kirel is certainly not the only student of Levi-Ofek. Among the names that came to her studio in the past and come to her studio today are Neta Barzilai, Anna Zak, Nono, Narcissus, Eden Elena, Sapir Saban, Tal Mossari, Yasmin Muallem, Assaf Amdursky and many other artists, and she also managed to accompany the late Yitzhak Klafter before Kaveret's last reunion performance.
In the process, for the past eight years she has also been Avraham Tal's regular backup singer and is currently touring with him in the US. A moment later she will land in England and join the Eurovision team, just before the semi-finals (Tuesday, May 9) and the final (Saturday night, May 5).
"I'm coming to Liverpool for the last rehearsal," she smiles. "It's important for me to hold Noa's hand, warm her up, support her vocally and be with her in the semi-finals and finals, because obviously she'll make it to the final."
"When we were working on 'Unicorn,' I told Noa not to sing in the lowest or highest voice, but to have an impressive, big and clear vocal range. I told her, 'You don't need it to be easy – but don't get to a performance that doesn't make sense later on live.'"
As you understood, her schedule is very busy, and if her name sounds familiar to you, maybe it's because you were at Avraham Tal's concert, saw the third season of "A Star is Born" in which she participated (and her performance of "Passenger Following Love" scorched the net), or you watched the 90th birthday celebrations of the late Shimon Peres, when Barbra Streisand took a last-minute breeze and Levi-Ofek was called in to replace her with the singing of "Hatikvah" with the Philharmonic Orchestra.
"When people ask me, I say my name is Naama Ofek," the singer and vocal instructor introduces herself, "but Naama Levy is my professional name. To this day, Avraham refuses to let it go, and in performances he presents me like that."
What's it like to perform with him on the biggest stages in Israel?
"Amazing experience. A week after the birth of my third son, Ariel, I was already back performing in Caesarea. We don't come to 'work,' but we come to the family. We come to vent, to rejoice, to cry. We are life.
"Performing with Avraham also keeps me balanced. Working with the students, I give of myself everything I have, and in performances, alongside giving and investing on stage, I also receive a lot of energy. In concerts, I'm a singer and not just a vocal instructor."
"We are family." With Avraham Tal in Caesarea, six days after the birth of her son Ariel, photo: Ziv Barak
She is 36 years old, married to Matan Ofek, a businessman from Kibbutz Ein Harod (Meuhed) and they have three children - Eli (5 and a half years old), Barry (<> years old) and Ariel (<> months old, "who arrived with an amazing surprise"). We meet in their toy-laden apartment in Tel Aviv, with Ariel on her shoulders throughout the interview, which takes place between making a bottle and changing diapers and dozens of WhatsApp messages that reach her.
We haven't started yet and I'm already confused. How do you define yourself?
"I used to call myself a real singer. I've been a singer at every level, and I think I'm a good singer. Then I was a singer and voice teacher, and today the definition is a vocal instructor, a vocal mentor, and also someone who sings."
When was the change that turned you from a front-line singer to someone who trains the greatest singers in the country?
"All my life I've wanted to sing. When I stand and sing, whether it's in commercials or recordings, I'll be immodest and say no one can do it, I have a lot of confidence."
So what happened along the way?
"I really wanted to lead myself to a solo career, but I couldn't. I had major panic attacks, until I decided I couldn't access it. The body blocked me, the heart blocked me, the head blocked me. Singing is very easy for me, but inside I'm someone completely different. Standing and being you, with your original songs, in front, just paralyzed me.
"On the other hand, today I realize that the panic attacks and the fear of touching it just freed me up for a different path. I started teaching friends to sing, because I'm a singer who knows what she's doing, and that's how I got to my place today."
Naama with the children. Right: Bari, Eli and Ariel, Photo: Efrat Eshel, Makeup and Hair: Ziv Ofek
"I became a singer"
Levi-Ofek got to her place in a way that wasn't always easy, if at all, and not just because of her panic attacks. She was born in Migdal HaEmek, the eldest daughter of Uri and Orna, a department manager at an electric company and an employee of a rehabilitation and diagnosis center. When she was a child, the family moved to Tivon. Despite the Yemeni-Iraqi house, "we didn't hear any oriental music at all," she says.
"I remember I would go to my grandmother and her name would be Farid al-Atrash or um Kulthum and I would ask her to shut down this music, it was hard for me to contain it. Today I hear more and I also have students like Sapir Saban, who sings Turkish. Sometimes I get a Turkish curl like that and I say, 'I curl like a sapphire.' At home we heard Elton John, Joe Cocker, Kevin, Phil Collins."
From a young age, were you the girl who always sang?
"Yes. I was a child who was invested in, my father pushed me to sing. Both my parents sing beautifully, and when I would learn songs, my father would correct me. My mother is a real singer. She played guitar all her life and sang in a duo with another childhood friend, but because she was educated in a religious home, she didn't invest anything else. It's clear to me that the talent is from both."
But alongside the excellent family relationships ("Dad is my big life, and Mom is my best friend") and inherited genetics, there is a story about a girl who struggled socially and was insulted on ethnic and racial grounds.
"I was the only black girl in the class," she recalls, her eyes filling with a saucer. "Academically I really wasn't good, I was a bad student. I loved music, and only in music and math was I good. I sang at ceremonies, and that's how I discovered that I could sing, because I was an unorthodox child – and that's a gentle expression.
"Tivon is a small place, and during that time children didn't know much about racism, and maybe that's why they called me 'Sambo.' On the annual trips, they would sing songs about me. I will never forget that I returned from such a trip and only one girl spoke to me. Everyone else sang songs about me. The teacher didn't intervene, even though she heard everything, and when my mother asked me after the trip how it was, I couldn't tell her. I only told her it was terrible. The irony is that the girl who led this whole thing is Moroccan, albeit with green eyes, but Moroccan."
Eventually she told her mother about the humiliations she was experiencing, and the mother, angry and angry, led to the correction of the distorted situation. "On the one hand, it was like, wow, well done Mom. She drove to the house of the girl who mocked me and shouted at her mother. But on the other hand I was shocked. I didn't want to be the girl in that situation so much."
"I was the only black girl in the class. I sang at ceremonies and that's how I discovered that I know how to sing, because I was unorthodox – and that's a delicate expression. I've done a lot of work with myself, but deep down that rejected child still exists."
Over time, the social situation improved to some extent, but Levy-Ofek continued to have difficulties in her studies, and the class teacher didn't help either. "To this day, I have a huge wound for things she said to me and how she behaved," she recalls.
The turning point came when her mother enrolled her in a band in her neighborhood. "My mother wanted me to have another framework that had nothing to do with school," she says. "Just this morning I had a lesson with singer Mika Hari, who now lives in Berlin and is a childhood friend of mine from the band. She just came to Israel and did a lesson with me."
From the moment she began her journey in the band through the star of the rejected and insecure girl, who dreamed of becoming Whitney Houston. "At first I got a line here, another line, another verse, and then whole songs, and suddenly I became the singer of the neighborhood. My self-confidence grew stronger and everything I wanted I did.
"At the end of twelfth grade we raised 'Salah Shabti' and I got the role of Haviba. I remember everyone looking and saying, 'How could Naama have gotten Habiba? What is she? She's nothing in layer,' and I got a lead role."
Didn't you have stage anxiety yet?
"Nope. When I stood on stage, no one could beat me."
Do you still think about the girl you were?
"I did a lot of work with myself and with professional guidance, but deep down that rejected girl still exists. I don't think anyone who has experienced something like this can ignore it, but it also strengthened me a lot."
"Need character and back"
ב־2005 התגייסה לצה"ל, לאחר שהתקבלה גם לתזמורת צה"ל וגם ללהקה צבאית והוצבה בלהקת חיל האוויר. כבר ביום הראשון של הטירונות שוחררה לאודישן האחרון של ריאליטי בשם "כוכב נולד", לקראת עונתה השלישית בפריים טיים של ערוץ 2.
"היה לי מדהים בכוכב נולד", היא נזכרת. "לא היה אז שום ריאליטי מוזיקלי אחר, ואני הגעתי למקום השישי והייתי כוכבת. זו היתה התוכנית הכי מדוברת בטלוויזיה וכולם ידעו מי אני, ראו אותי ורצו שאני אשיר. כשנשרתי מהתחרות זו היתה נפילה רכה מאוד להמון הופעות וליחס חם וזה היה נהדר. שם הבנתי שאני צריכה וחייבת להיות זמרת, היה לי מומנטום".
כשהיא חולמת למלא את קיסריה ואמפי שוני, לוי־אופק החלה לאסוף חומרים לאלבום. "היה לי ברור שאני הולכת למסלול של להיות זמרת. עבדתי בזה, היו לי שני אלבומים מוכנים והתחלתי לעבוד עם המפיק עופר מאירי ("מטרופולין") והמנהל אשר ביטנסקי, שניהם מאוד ידועים בתעשייה. אם רק הייתי שולחת את היד - הייתי יכולה להגיע להרבה מקומות, אבל אני לא מלחינה או כותבת ולא הצלחתי להביא את עצמי למקום הזה".
תסבירי, מה בדיוק קרה?
"It just didn't happen. I sent a song to the radio and it was played maybe once or twice. It was a bit of an ethnic song, very old."
And you wanted something else?
"I was 19 years old, and it was high writing that didn't wear on me. It wasn't me."
"I wanted a solo career and singing is very easy for me, but inside I'm someone completely different. Standing and being you, with your original songs, in front, just paralyzed me. Today I understand that the panic attacks and fear have freed me on a different path."
With the knowledge you have today, what would you do differently?
"I would do anything to compose and learn to write on my own. I would plow through life, and that's also what I pass on to my students. I had the spark, I just couldn't find the tools to bring it, and I think today maybe I would have found the direction myself, even if it took me years.
"I would find my DNA, who I am, and then compose and write and leave even a hundred songs in a drawer until one came out that was me, and then another. I would take an ensemble of people I love to write and compose with and bring it to a place that is me."
You describe here a difficult and arduous process, and we live in instant culture.
"That's right, and that's the contradiction. Everyone ran fast, do fast, momentum, fast, fast, fast, and I didn't know how to contain it. I had nothing, I was characterless then. Today I look and say what a good girl I was, who doesn't even understand what television is. Today I understand that on television you don't just have to sing, you need character, you need your back."
After "A Star is Born" she received many phone calls, one of them from Harel Sakat. "He said to me, 'Listen, I'm letting you be depressed for exactly two days, and you're coming to sing with me.' I sang with him for a few years and then with Shiri Maimon for about a year, and then I was accepted into Voca People, the original ensemble."
It's a great honor to be in this great band.
"My job there was written about me, about my abilities, and it was crazy vocal school. Three and a half seconds I was in every hole in the world, until it became very difficult. We were kind of a military band, including the bad aspect at some point. Being with the same people all the time and with a lot of ego – I decided to leave."
Even earlier, at the age of 19, she began studying voice. "When I got to Rachel Hochman, my teacher, she grabbed me with both hands and told me, 'You'll be a teacher, you have all the skills.' She actually built a career for me." Since then, for 17 years, Levy-Ofek has been studying with Hochman ("Until she stops, I won't let her go"), and today they are colleagues who transfer students between them.
In recent years, alongside her career as a vocal instructor and performances as Avraham Tal's backup singer, Levi-Ofek managed to work as a vocal instructor in the X Factor program as well as in several plays at the Cameri Theater, including Maor Zagori's "This Is Me" and "Life is Cabaret". At the same time, she also continues in the position of vocal director of military bands.
"I'm responsible for all the placements and screening," she explains, "and even if something happens with the soldiers. Sometimes people stop me on the street and say, 'You tested me,' and sometimes they even see me as some scary character.
"Two of my students, Bar Miniali and Neta Roth, who are two huge stars, said that when they were in the military bands I looked very suffocating to them. There are those who say about me, 'Wow, you have to study with her,' but not all of them. There are those who are really scared and scared to death of me, both because that's the status in this position and because I'm very tough."
"Excited about the students"
Above all, Levi-Ofek is the behind-the-scenes master, the one who trains and guides in a modest rehearsal room in her home the singers who dominate the music industry in Israel. The vocal mentor behind them in Shawnee, Yarkon Park, Barbie and in remote pubs, holds their hand and accompanies them in their low moments, not necessarily cool.
Do you remember the first meetings with the students?
"Sure. Not everyone is born with a singer's natural throat, so you have to purchase it. When Anna Zack studied with me in the past, I told her, 'You have tremendous potential. You're a singer because you have the looks, beauty and charisma, but here you weren't born with it naturally and you have to work harder.' She said, 'I know.'"
With Nono did you have a click?
"Nono (Naomi Aharoni Gal) is an amazing story. Assaf Deri (Harel Sakat's manager) called me and said, 'There's a singer, look at her video.' I saw, and at first I didn't understand. I said, 'Can I hear again? What is this creature?' and at first I said, 'Sorry, I don't have room.'"
Didn't sign in?
"At first I didn't, but then I told him, 'Well, okay, once every three weeks.' When she came to class and opened her mouth, I realized that she was a gifted musician, exactly the kind I loved. One that puts my throat, heart, wisdom and vocal and throat intelligence into my hands. I said to myself, 'This is material I'll do the best I know with,' and since then she's been with me, from the first second she's appeared until now – and she's soaring. Today I'm with her in everything related to her voice, musicality and the things around her, I'm no longer just her vocal instructor. She trusts me and I fell in love with everything about her."
"Gifted musician". With Nono, photo: from Instagram
And then there's Netta Barzilai.
"I started working with Neta recently and she's full of style. She is a student who has already arrived as a 'product', she was already 'Neta Barzilai'. Today I understand that it was clear that she would win Eurovision.
"The opposite of her is Sapir Saban. I pushed Sapir into The Voice and accompanied her hand in hand throughout the season. It was clear to me that she would win. Who sings a Turk like that? Who has such a strong character, who can contain this thing? It was clear to me that she was winning, but it wasn't clear to her at all and she didn't want to. She was very scared, but she did it hugely."
"I have students who won't be able to survive me and us and this voice load because they haven't opened. On the other hand, I have a student who told me something very personal. He was unpacking, he felt comfortable and his heart was in good hands, and suddenly something happened to his voice."
It turns out that you are also a psychologist and a mental supporter.
"A lot. In my studio are the biggest secrets. Music is a soul, and everything is very connected together. I have students here who won't be able to survive me and us and this voice load, because they haven't opened. On the other hand, I have a student who told me something very personal, and once he did that, we didn't sing for a minute in class, we just talked, and this class was one of the best lessons we've ever had. He unpacked, felt comfortable and had his heart in good hands, and suddenly something happened to his voice.
"I don't talk to every student the same. There is a student who cannot contain directly, and there is a student who only needs directly. There is a student I need to talk to with a kind of caress, there is a student who wants to make slow progress, and there are students who want me to push them harder. Everyone is a different world."
What excites you most today?
"Honestly, and besides my family? I'm excited about the students. I can get excited, stand, clap, bow to them... I can tell the student, 'You get it, like I told you before, how amazing, how fun!' When I go to Nono's Barbie concert, when I do Yarkon Park with Noa, or when I go to Levontin 7 with a student I believe in and he does his first solo performance when 30 people come, I'm crazy excited with everyone."
shirshirziv@gmail.com
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