CANTOR JOEL CAPLAN

Pesach music at the Caplan seder

You probably know that Cantor Caplan is a music nerd.

But did you know that the Caplans usually have a two-hour choir rehearsal right before seder each year?

Nancy takes care of just about every aspect of our seders — including who’s coming, how we can seat all those people, and cooking and shopping and more cooking and MORE cooking. I do help with cleaning and with making our kitchen pesahdik, but I’m definitely the Assistant.

What am I in charge of? Basically three things: Bringing chairs upstairs, bringing Haggadahs upstairs, and dealing with choir music. We’re fortunate that there are a lot of experienced Jewish choir singers in our family. Our children — Ilan, Simona, and Tamar — all sang with me here in the Tov M’od Children’s Choir and HaZamir NJ Teen Choir, and then they all went on to lead Jewish a cappella choirs at their respective undergrad universities. Simona met her now-husband in her choir, and all our children have married musicians.

I started writing a cappella arrangements for the seder maybe 15 years ago. Some things are harmonizations of well-known Seder melodies:

But there’s a fair amount of Doo-wop, Beatles, and what WMTR now calls “Classic Oldies”:

Happily, the next generation has added new pieces in honor of their children, our grandchildren. Right now I’m finishing a new arrangement in honor of Raphael, who was born this past October.

So if you’re coming to the Caplans, be ready to sing a lot! (But you already knew that, right?)