Shira Lissek

A house full of music

Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Shira grew up in a cantor's household. Her father, Cantor Leon Lissek, served Congregation B'nai Amoona for thirty years, and she sang in its choir as a teenager.

The recordings he played shaped her ear before any teacher did: Israel Song Festival songs, hazzanut (cantorial music), musical theater, the American songbook and opera. She began leading services as a teenager, volunteering to lead High Holiday services after leaving home for college at seventeen, and taking her first professional High Holiday position at nineteen.

"There was always music in our house — everything from the Israel Song Festival to hazzanut to musical theater, the American songbook, opera."

School and sanctuary

Her cantorial training ran in parallel: she studied hazzanut with Cantors Leon Lissek, David Barash and Paul Zim, learning prayer modes and practical skills from her father — and, in her own words, "a lot from just listening to him."

"It's been a long journey to find my own voice as a female cantor, but now I feel that when I daven, I no longer am imitating my mentors or the records that I heard, but that I am praying authentically from my own heart."

Voices she turns to

Beyond the classical and cantorial repertoire, Shira names the composers she sings and commissions when she builds a program.

• Oran Eldor

  Go-to composer for new liturgical settings; music producer and arranger on both albums

• Beth Styles

  Go-to composer for new liturgical settings

• Meir Finkelstein

  Go-to composer for new liturgical settings

• Raymond Goldstein

  Classical music and new hazzanut arrangements

• Gerald Cohen

  Classical music and new hazzanut arrangements

• Abbie Strauss

  Contemporary styles

• Rick Recht

  Contemporary styles

• Laurie Akers

  Contemporary styles

• Sheldon Low

  Contemporary styles

• Cantor Daniel Singer

  Settings she loves to sing

The career so far

1. 2007 – 2013Hazzan and musical director, Congregation Mount Sinai, Brooklyn Heights
2. 2013 – 2018Associate Cantor, Park Avenue Synagogue, New York
3. 2015P'tach Libi — Open My Heart released, produced by Shira with Oran Eldor
4. 2017Ani Maamin, I Believe — A Voice for Humanity released with the F.A.M.E.'s Project orchestra
5. 2018 – presentSenior Cantor, Temple Israel, Charlotte, North Carolina

Opera credits include Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni at Seattle Opera and Mimì in La Bohème at Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, and pops concert programs with the Gulf Coast Symphony — among them an Irving Berlin evening, Broadway showstoppers and an Andrew Lloyd Webber program. She has sung "Oseh Shalom" with Cantor Azi Schwartz, and appears as a concert vocalist with symphony orchestras.