How does the leader of a Jewish cultural revival klezmer band expand his creative horizons and add a few more hyphens to an already bursting-at-the-seams résumé?
For Leeav Sofer, the answer is about as basic as it gets. Camp directing, musical theater … no matter what the opportunity, Sofer says, “Bring it on!” That’s how he ended up playing a bird in the acclaimed family musical “Man Covets Bird” at the 24th Street Theatre.
“It all starts with saying, ‘Yes.’ That’s kind of how I pegged myself over the last few years,” said Sofer, whose position as a choral instructor at the Colburn School for performing arts is now one of his many duties. “I said yes to everything, whether I knew I was capable of it or not.”
Thanks to his degrees in clarinet and vocal performance from CSU Long Beach, Sofer knows his way around a musical score. Through his work at Colburn, he has created choirs for underserved communities and co-founded a Jewish youth orchestra. He gigs regularly as a clarinetist and pianist, both publicly and privately, and with his band Mostly Kosher.
But his more recent artistic ventures have been, to some extent, leaps of faith made both by the artist himself and by people who were interested in seeing him branch out. People like the chairwoman of Colburn’s drama department, Debbie Devine, who called Sofer “a life force with a tremendous amount of skills.”
“I’ve worked with musicians, and they’re often in their siloed world,” said Devine, who is also the artistic director of the 24th Street Theatre in downtown L.A. “Leeav was hungry to learn my art form, which is theater.”
Not long after Sofer joined the Colburn faculty, Devine began enlisting him to help with a camp that Colburn runs for students from underserved communities. She commissioned him to write a camp anthem and on several occasions put him in charge of leading the camp. She ultimately directed Sofer in a culminating musical performance that required Sofer to act and perform with the kids.
In the summer of 2015, a divine opportunity for Sofer to take the stage at the 24th Street Theatre caused his career to take wing. While preparing to direct the American premiere of “Man Covets Bird” by Finegan Kruckemeyer, Devine turned to Sofer again. The piece was written as a 70-minute tone poem for a single performer, but Devine decided it needed original music and perhaps even a second actor to play the bird.
“She called me in to possibly score the show and be the composer for it,” Sofer, 25, said. “As things progressed, she invited me to come to auditions, and she wanted me to work with the actors a little bit and see what their musical capabilities were.”
Sofer ended up pairing with actor Andrew Huber and providing music direction and original music. The performance played through the fall to enthusiastic audiences and has returned to the 24th Street Theatre for a limited engagement through May 15.
And with that, Leeav Sofer the choir master, camp assistant, musician and composer also became Leeav Sofer, the actor. In the play, a boy wakes up and discovers that his parents barely recognize him. Convinced he now has to start doing adult things, he takes in a lost bird, nurtures it and ends up living in an abandoned ice cream truck.
“It’s been a huge test for me, but I’m loving it,” Sofer said. “I probably wouldn’t have gone very far without Debbie’s great direction. She’s really a miracle worker.”
At least one person in Sofer’s life would display little surprise at seeing him try his hand at stage performance. In addition to being the cantor at Temple Beth Shalom of Long Beach, Sofer’s mother, Judy, coordinates the cultural arts programs at the Jewish Federation of the Greater San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys. Recognizing that her son had vocal talents to go along with his musical skills, Judy Sofer encouraged her son to pursue a voice degree in college as well as his degree in clarinet.
And how did she react to his treading the boards as an actor-musician?
“She was kind of like, ‘I told you so,’ ” Leeav Sofer said. “The play has a scene where the bird is leaving the nest, and the first time she saw it, she was a bucket of tears. She came up to me afterwards backstage and she said, ‘It’s like I’m the man and you’re the bird!’ It was pretty funny.”
A native of north Orange County, Sofer began his musical studies as a boy, but he quit formal studies after a year of piano lessons. Instead, he went through his mother’s music books and started learning the types of songs that he was interested in playing. He picked up the clarinet in middle school and continued to develop musical reading skills as well. Urged to hone his piano skills by his middle school and high school jazz director Pete Perez, Sofer took to jazz piano while also continuing his clarinet studies and giving private lessons.
“My passion was jazz piano even though I never had any formal training,” said Sofer, who attended Valencia High School in Placentia. “That’s what I would do for five hours after school, until I didn’t get my homework done. So my mom would ground me from piano instead of TV.”
While playing piano at a family friend’s wedding, Sofer schmoozed during the reception and a wedding guest asked whether Sofer played klezmer music — seeing as he was Jewish and a musician.
“Of course!” Sofer replied, even though he had never played a song in his life.
Then he was asked whether he had a klezmer band. Again, he replied with a resounding, “Yes!”
“She said, ‘It’s great! I have a huge gala next year and I want your band to play at the gala,’ ” Sofer recalled. “I jumped in my car and called every trusted Jewish and non-Jewish musician that I knew and said, ‘Hey do you want to be in a klezmer band?’ Call after call, it was basically, ‘Klezmer musicians unite!’ ”
He formed the band Mostly Kosher, which, in addition to playing weddings and bar mitzvahs, soon started booking dates at bigger venues around the southland, including the Ford Amphitheatre, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, the Autry Museum of the American West and the Skirball Cultural Center. The band released its first CD in 2014 and is working on its follow-up effort, which Sofer said combines Jewish music and Americana as well as the band’s first original compositions.
Following its televised performance as part of the Los Angeles County Holiday Celebration at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Mostly Kosher bookings have exploded. The band is planning a tour to the Bay Area in June to headline the Silicon Valley Jewish Music Festival. Recently, Sofer has had to refuse some band gigs because they conflicted with “Man Covets Bird.”
Given his myriad duties across arts education and with his band, Sofer is uncertain whether acting will continue to be a regular part of his agenda.
On the other hand…
“I think that the ‘Man Covets Bird’ experience has definitely been one of the best professional and personal development experiences I could have been lucky enough to have fall in my lap,” he said.
“It kind of reflects the rest of my life as Leeav Sofer the yes-man who is doing so many different things, wherever they lead me.”
“Man Covets Bird” will be playing at the 24th Street Theatre through May 15. For more information, please visit 24thstreet.org.
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