Naomi Faran, 66 years old, hometown — Beit Yitzhak, the musical director of the Moran choir
About Astana
I am in Astana for the first time, and this is a wonderful place. The new buildings surprised me, the light, it's like a little Las Vegas, when you drive in the city at night. We saw Akorda, visited EXPO and made a funny photo on the background of the inscription I love Astana.
Before my arrival, I knew about Kazakhstan due to my friend Gulmira, whom I met in Budapest. We both were in the jury at the music competition and found a common language.
After that, we became friends. And she asked me many times to come here. Therefore, as soon as there was an opportunity to perform in Kazakhstan, we gathered a choir that will sing at the festival and came here. We came to Astana to perform at the festival «Astana — the voice of the world», 18 singers, manager and pianist came with me. In general, there are more than 200 singers in our team.
We managed to perform in a large shopping centre Mega Silk Way. People around shouted, laughed and looked happy.
I like people here. They are friendly and beautiful. I feel good here. For example, when we were at Mega, we needed a taxi and didn't know what to do. Four young men approached us and offered help. I was pleased.
My singers liked it here too. They are young, and it is a great experience for them to see other places, different culture, to meet a lot of good people. I think they're happy. The youngest is only 14 years old.
I noticed a certain difference in our people, especially during the ceremony, because the President came. The ceremony was organized carefully, with a clear order. We rehearsed several times, went up on stage, again and again, then went down, then went in and out. At home, we have never prepared. If we have a President coming, we behave as usual. And here look even on clothes and its colour. Our singers were unaccustomed to such an order.
The main purpose of our participation at the festival in Astana is to introduce Israeli music. We brought more modern Israeli music, written for us by the best composers of Israel.
About creativity
I live in the village. And my dream was to create a professional choir. In the village of Israel, it is difficult. All my friends asked me why I started in the village, offered to start in the city. But I decided I would start in my small town. At first, it was difficult, but I had a high-level goal: to create a choir that will perform in the world on behalf of Israel, to make them the best, so that the choir sang with the philharmonic orchestra, with the opera house. I am committed to the cause, I believe the choir is able to help the child to open up, to become tolerant, happy and sociable.
I have three children, two daughters singers and the son is a playwright. My 12-year-old granddaughter also sings in the choir. So I have a musical family that I'm proud of.
I myself am not a singer, but I clearly know what I want to hear from the singing of the choir singers. I believed in this case, and it happened the way I wanted it to. It's been 30 years, we have six groups.
We visited many countries with the choir. We travelled all over America, Scandinavia, Europe, were in Russia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China. In each country we perform a certain repertoire, sometimes we prepare national songs, sometimes different genres of musical compositions, classics. We sing in Hebrew, English, Latin, Czech and many other languages.
We have good songs and melodies. People like that. Many people ask me to send them music because it touched their soul.
