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Hitting a high note By Neri Livneh Tags: Neri Livnh, Tel Aviv This is how the four-stage formula for happiness works in the marriage of Nurit Galron and Rafi Reshef. "At the beginning of every marriage, everything is always great," Galron explains. "Then the exhausting routine sets in. Then comes the stage where you ask yourself: Is this it? Is this all I'm going to have for the rest of my lif? And I think that once you get past that, you come to the best stage of all. Which is where Rafi and I are now. And with this, as with anything else in life, the most important rule is to keep on taking a good look at yourself in the mirror." And now, at this stage, the rumors have finally been forgotten, and the questions about the age gap between the two of you. Galron: "I clearly remember the urge I had to run in the streets and shout 'It's not true!' and the understanding that it wouldn't help in the least. I also remember how, once, [journalist] Yaron London interviewed me at his home in Afeka. I was very young then, not yet 40, and London looked at me closely and asked me if I had makeup on. I didn't, as a matter of fact. Afterward he said to me: Aren't you worried because you're five years older than Rafi? Why should he want you? I felt horrible. Mostly because Yaron is also married to a woman who is older than him and I felt like maybe I had horns, but didn't know it." Advertisement Did it ever bother you that Rafi is younger than you? "Never. First of all, because he's always been the adult and the responsible one between the two of us. And besides, as time goes on, the age difference has less and less meaning. Suddenly we're all more or less the same age." Have there been any crises between you? "I've had my crises and Rafi has had his, but we've never had a crisis as a couple. For me it's always connected with what comes after - after you do a show, after you put out a record, after you've experienced some amazing peak of creativity. It's a kind of down, like a small postpartum depression, that you learn to live with. You know from the start that it's temporary and will pass. On days like that, Rafi lifts me back up." Galron has been around for some time, but it seems that her new maturity, at age 57, has helped her muster the courage to return to acting after taking a break for many years. This month, the drama series "Revi'iyat Ran" ("The Ran Quadruplets") premiered on the Yes-Stars channel. Galron plays Miki Ran, mother of the first set of quadruplets born in Israel. The character is a woman from the suburbs, who gave up a career to devote herself to her family. Galron herself is currently marking the 30th year of her relationship with NMC Records and has never been faced with a choice between motherhood and career. Still, there are a few similarities between Miki and Nurit: Like Miki, Galron is very maternal and family-oriented, and she also has been searching for herself a bit in the past few years - a quest that led her, among other things, to join actress Mia Farrow on a UNICEF trip to Africa, to sculpting and also to acting. The last time Galron, a graduate of the Tel Aviv theater department, starred on the screen was 15 years ago, in the lead role in Uri Barbash's film "Derech ha'nesher" ("Where Eagles Fly"). One of her teachers at the university was playwright and director Danny Horowitz, father of Yariv Horowitz, director of "The Ran Quadruplets." "Two years ago, after the record 'Ma shehashamayim notnim' ('What Heaven Gives') didn't do well, I decided to switch my personal management to Asaf Deri and also to sign up with the actors' agent Peri Kafri. When Peri suggested that I go to the audition for 'The Ran Quadruplets,' I thought it would be very nice to return to the experience of acting. I really loved it then and I really love it now. Happily, Yariv gave me an audition and then another audition and another. He helped me all the time, gave me a safe feeling. He's a wonderful director with an eye for the little details and he also has a real feel for the aesthetic. When one curl was out of place, even if the scene was good, we shot it again." Galron sees the series as a new beginning: "I'd be very happy if I were sent to more auditions. I talked about it with Shosh Atari, who made a guest appearance on the show before her death, and did so well. It's such a shame that she's gone. She talked to me about ... how ecstatic she was that this series had suddenly happened to her out of the blue. I kind of have the same feeling about 'The Ran Quadruplets.' 'Not a jazz singer' On a recent Friday evening, Galron is standing in her North Tel Aviv penthouse duplex, preparing her special schnitzel for the family: her husband of 25 years, broadcaster and television presenter Rafi Reshef, and their three children - Omer, 24, a film student; Michal, 23, who's studying psychology and the arts; and Noa, 16. A month ago, Michal moved out of the tiny apartment on the roof to a place with roommates in Tel Aviv; Omer left home after returning from an extended post-army trip. Since then, the house has felt a little too big to Galron and Reshef. "When the older kids were still at home every week, we had an evening that we called 'family talk,'" she says. "And the kids would really wait for it and prepare topics for discussion. We always took a trip abroad each summer without friends to strengthen the family bonds. It led to very good things and there's something very open between us. When it comes to my relationship with my children, I'm very happy." How did you feel when they left home? "It was a little weird for me. When Michali left, we really felt like we were starting to get old and that the chicks were really leaving the nest. Only one chick is left. The feeling is ambivalent: On the one hand, I was pleased about their independence. I remember when I rented my first apartment and the joy I felt about living independently. On the other hand, it suddenly hit me that we were moving into a new phase." Are you afraid of the time when you'll need them more than they need you? "I hope that won't happen. It happened to me with my parents." Galron vividly recalls the early years and motherhood and the accompanying anxieties. "When Omer was born I felt like I was reaching one hand down to him and one hand up to the place where my mother was supposed to be - and there was no one there to hold my hand. The first song I ever wrote was about this, 'Kesher hashtika' ('The Bond of Silence') ... But I very quickly fell in love with being a mother, and let's not forget that my children have a wonderful father, who's a champ at listening and also a father who grew up with wonderful parents. Fortunately, we had enough money so at every point in my life I could decide how much I wanted to be at home and how much I wanted to perform. I didn't have to be drawn totally into motherhood, like the character I play on the show." There seems to be quite a contrast between the spacious Galron-Reshef penthouse and her parents' simple apartment in a working-class neighborhood of Herzliya, where Galron and her big sister, Ita Gluzman, grew up. Their father Moshe was a cashier at a supermarket; their mother, Leah, gave up a successful career as a singer, at her husband's insistence. Galron's parents didn't see eye to eye politically, either: "He admired [Menachem] Begin and she was a Mapai-nik, and as with everything else, they argued about that, too." Leah was a soloist with the Jewish Brigade troupe and the first to sing the hit song "Etz harimon" ("The Pomegranate Tree"). Like Galron, when she grew up, she loved Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, but she couldn't afford to buy her musical daughters a piano. Ita, and later Nurit, were sent to take accordion lessons. "I really hated the accordion, especially because my sister, who was four years older than me, played it so much better. Today she is a music teacher. I think that my life would have been totally different if we'd had a piano at home." Different how? "Maybe I would have felt musical enough to compose on my own. But maybe not - I'm too lazy. Maybe I would have really sung jazz because for jazz you have to improvise. I sing something close to jazz and I really love it, both technically and in terms of the rhythm, but I'm not a jazz singer." Did your mother want you to become a singer? "I imagine she'd be pleased if she knew that that's what I've become, but she didn't get to see it. She first got sick when I was 18, as a result of treatment by a quack, who did something wrong to her neck. She died when I was 22. When I think about her, I mostly remember my cheek resting on her chest on the bus when she would take me to see her relatives in Haifa. My father lost a wife and child in the Holocaust. He was a soldier in the Anders Army and left behind a pregnant wife. My grandfather was the cantor in the synagogue and he called everyone to come inside. But then they came and killed them. My father escaped and made it to Palestine, to Ramat Hakovesh, where he hid with a group of deserters for a few months. My mother immigrated before the Holocaust and enlisted in the Jewish Brigade and was a fighter. She was divorced when my father met her in Tel Aviv. He didn't like the fact that she was a singer and made her a very frustrated woman, who had to pass up invitations to sing. I wasn't close to her because as an adolescent, I rebelled in a big way and when I started to get close to her she was already sick and helpless." What kind of relationship did you have with your father? "I didn't have much of a relationship with him. There's one moment that I remember, when I was sick and already grown up, and he came to visit me in my rented apartment and told me about the snow in Ukraine, where he grew up. I asked myself: Did my father even notice that there was snow? He was such a hardscrabble kind of person, consumed with work and pressure and tension, and I never sat down and talked with him about anything to do with life or his view of the world. We didn't have that kind of relationship at all." Is there a difference between you and Rafi as parents, and the kind of parenthood you experienced? "A huge difference. My children's father is as different as can possibly be from the way my father was. I've also spent a lot more time with my children than my mother had to be with me. They were both very hard workers and were always working. I also think that because, unlike in the case of our parents, we didn't switch cultures or countries or language, the generation gap was much smaller." Has there been an evolution in your motherhood as the children have grown? "We're much more on the same level now. I don't want to say that we're good friends, because that sounds too cute, and because we all remember who the parents are and who the children are. But we're equals. The rule of looking in the mirror and not avoiding what I see there also covers the problems with the children. When there is a problem, I feel the need to solve it. It's the same thing with problems in my career or with Rafi - the most important thing is not to ignore it." Spotlighting Zach Two weeks ago, Galron released a new single, "Ayafti" ("I Got Tired"), the first from an album completely dedicated to the poems of Natan Zach, set to music by Ilan Wirzberg. This is Galron's second record devoted to Zach's poems. The first, "Shirim be'emtza halaila" ("Songs in the Middle of the Night"), from 1981, includes songs that became all-time classics, like "Ki ha'adam etz hasadeh" ("For Man is the Tree in the Field") and "Keshetziltzalt ra'ad kolekh" ("When You Called Your Voice Trembled"). Since then, on each album, she has included at least one piece by Zach. "If I were a poet, I'd be Natan Zach," she says, explaining that she discovered him in high school. "I was a girl who read poetry. Next to my bed I had Zach and Goldberg and Alterman and Dahlia Ravikovitch and Yona Wallach. I had a fantastic literature teacher, who spoke this beautiful and perfect Hebrew, and she instilled in me the idea that in songs, the words are the most important thing." Contrary to what her latest album is called, Galron insists she is far from tired. "Just the opposite. You're catching me at the most energetic time I've had in the past few years. I've got the series, and the concert performances and the sculpting, too. I'm in a very productive period. The idea of 'Ayafti' is something that relates to every age and every generation. You get tired of something - of running around, of work, of seeking success, of causing pain, of being hurt, of eating, of being hungry." So what are you're tired of? "Today, nothing. Except evil and violence. Of not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in our life here. I'm tired of stupidity and of all the ills in society." The tired one in the family was Reshef, who "would just fall asleep at the table in the evening after going to work at the radio early in the morning, and continuing nonstop from there to Channel 10." Last month, at age 52, he decided to leave his morning show on Army Radio. Galron, meanwhile, traveled to the Republic of Central Africa, for a public relations campaign in what she describes as "the Third World of the Third World," sponsored by IsraAID and UNICEF. "So Rafi left Army Radio and I traveled to Africa and that's how we celebrated our 25th anniversary," she laughs. More than 25 years have passed since Reshef found himself uncharacteristically tongue-tied, when asked to interview the woman who was already a famous singer. The first floor of their house is decorated with Galron's sculptures, which are mostly of women. Two are self-portraits: One is a head composed primarily of an open mouth and curls (her teacher told her to start with a self-portrait and Galron, as is natural for someone who's been singing her whole life, says: "So of course I started from the mouth"). In the second, she looks serious and thoughtful: "I've always had an aura of sadness and melancholy, but the truth is that I also love to laugh and to make people laugh, and at my shows I get pretty wild." She came to sculpting two years ago following the failure of her last album. "I was looking for something new to do with myself, and downstairs I saw a note advertising sculpture lessons with Evie Pollig. Since I new her years ago I decided to call. Before that, I had no idea that I could sculpt and I'd never done any drawing either. She said to me, come and give it a try. I love it so much. The Sundays when I have sculpting lessons are fantastic days for me. But I'll never do an exhibition. If I thought that I could sculpt the way I sing, then I would do one. "Ten or 15 years ago, during one of the breaks that I take occasionally to ask myself what I ought to change in my life, I went to a vocational-guidance institute. The first thing that their test found was that singing is a need of mine, and it's also therapeutic for the people who hear it. So I went back to singing. Basically, I received a seal of approval because I found out that it wasn't just egoistic on my part, but that I was also helping the world in a way." Two homebodies The idyll of the Galron-Reshef household has been marred by two traumatic events: Galron's niece, Lihi Gluzman, was involved in the murder of young Assaf Stierman in 1996, and turned state's witness. The second event would not have received such wide coverage had it not occurred in their building: the accidental death in 2005 of an air-conditioning technician, who fell from the top floor. She declines to speak about either. The couple stays out of the gossip columns. They're homebodies. "We don't go out much. We invite friends over or go to their homes, and sometimes we go to cafes," she explains. Galron gets up early to get Noa off to school, and when it's not too hot starts her day with a walk on the beach. She occasionally does Pilates. Sometimes she has shows, sometimes she's working on an album. "I don't have a set schedule and I've never had one. Singers don't have that kind of schedule. And since I don't need to perform a lot to make a living, I'm not too pressured either." In "Ahareinu hamabul" ("Apres Nous the Deluge"), your song that was banned on Army Radio, you protested Tel Aviv hedonism. Do you feel guilty about your affluent, bourgeois life? "No. What Rafi and I have we earned with hard work. When Rafi first met me, I thought that I was richer. I was already earning money, and I remember what a happy and also very sad feeling I had when I suddenly realized I was making way more money than my father ever did, who worked like crazy his whole life. It's true that Rafi comes from a very well-to-do family, but he's always paid his own way and that's what we've done together, too. Today, of course, Rafi is much more responsible than I am for our financial well-being. "Besides, all of those flashy things aren't our taste anyway. I'm glad we have the money to stay in a nice hotel when we travel abroad, and I'm glad that we have the ability to allow our children to take a little time deciding what they want to study and what they want to do. I didn't have this privilege. My family didn't have money. I went to school on a scholarship and until the time I released my first record and felt confident that I could make a living, I kept studying at the university and singing in plays put on by Orna Porat's youth theater. Today I don't have to scrimp and save, and it's very nice not to have an overdraft at the bank, but I'm not a spendthrift by any means." She says that "Apres Nous the Deluge" is not current anymore. "When I wrote it in 1989, it was when Rafi and I were stuck in a huge traffic jam at 12:30 A.M. on a Thursday in Tel Aviv. In Tel Aviv you have traffic jams because of all the people out partying, and at the same time on the radio we were hearing about terrible things that were happening in the territories. That's what inspired me to write the song that protests the disconnect between the 'State of Tel Aviv,' all caught up in hedonism, and what was really happening. Today, everyone without exception, in Tel Aviv and everywhere else in the country, is seeking a solution." And you don't feel like you're standing on the sidelines? Your voice isn't really heard at demonstrations or political events. "I'm not cut out for those kinds of wars, but I'm very pleased that because of my age and the certain status that I have, I can harness what's called my 'celebrity' to help with humanitarian issues. I once went to see the refugees from Darfur in a shelter at the central bus station. I have friends in Machsom Watch and I admire them, but I'm not cut out for wars." Besides making the trip to Africa, Galron has also been behind a joint project of the AKIM organization, which supports people with special needs, and the Tel Aviv University theater department. Half of the actors are disabled adults and the other half are theater students. Together they put on plays for children. "I didn't think about it when I chose AKIM, but then I immediately realized what I'd done. Throughout my childhood my mother was a caretaker at Levzeller, a private institution for mentally handicapped children in Herzliya. She worked from afternoon until evening, when I was home from school. I always had an ambivalent feeling toward this job of hers. I felt like she was devoting more time to those children than to me. This came out very strongly in my rebellious period - it was like I was blaming her ... But I suddenly found myself being active in AKIM and I realized that in some way, I was continuing my relationship with my mother." The Yehudit curls She released her first album, "Nurit Galron," exactly 30 years ago. Since then, she has released 17 more and has sold 250,000 copies. The most successful was "Mashehu bilvava" ("Heartfelt"), in 1986, which went platinum. The years haven't left their mark on her voice: "I can still sing all the songs in the same keys that I used to sing them, I'm happy to say." Her style hasn't changed dramatically either. When starting out, she performed primarily on kibbutzim together with Yael German (a composer and accompanist). The pair sang covers of songs by the singer who is still their favorite today: Chava Alberstein. "Chava's not that much older than me, but she started singing very young, and so I can say that I admired her since childhood." Galron was soon discovered by producer Asher Bitansky, with whom she made her first recording. To this day, she says, people get her mixed up with Yehudit Ravitz. Maybe because of their curly hair. Maybe because the two women, who have been good friends from early on in their careers, gained fame at about the same time. Galron: "There was something similar about our singing, too. We both sang in a very intimate way. Our lyrics weren't nationalistic. We sang about life, about the day to day; we sang close to the microphone. We have a similar tone and range, and we understand texts the same way. We met when we were both on 'Studio No. 1' on Army Radio. We recorded three songs each." Perhaps it was the choices made by Ravitz and Galron that led the former to perform for large audiences in places like Caesarea, and the latter to do shows in smaller venues. "I never had a solo concert in Caesarea, but I performed there once together with Yehudit," she adds. It doesn't make you jealous? "No. Smaller places are more my style." You don't feel that by not composing your own music and rarely writing your own lyrics or producing for other singers, as Ravitz does, that you're missing out on something in your career? Perhaps there is a sense that you're standing in her shadow? "First of all, it's a great honor to stand in her shadow, even if that sounds a little ridiculous. If I've been performing and recording for 30 years now, isn't it a bit much to say that I'm in the shadows? As for writing, I can find poems written by poets and connect to them as if I wrote them, and that's how I choose what to sing. And I don't feel that I'm musical enough to write. There's also an advantage to just performing the songs: I can touch on any style I want. I once wandered around in the fields of jazz, and later in rock and roll, and now I'm more into soft rock and roll. I can sing what I love when the interpretation is mine. Whatever stops I've made along the way, it's always been me. The interpretation is me." Do you feel that you're still relevant? "I've been happy to see that a new generation has been added to my audience. Sometimes, these are young people who come along with their parents, but at my concerts I also see a lot of young people who've come on their own." Just minutes after "Ayafti" is played on the radio for the first time, while we're sitting in a coffee shop at the Tel Aviv Port, Galron received a very moving message from Aharon Geva, son of Dudu Geva, who was a good friend of hers and Reshef's. Geva wrote that the CD is very powerful. The same day, Natan Zach, who has a reputation for being hard to please, called to compliment Galron. At her recent show at the Zappa Club in Tel Aviv, her daughter Michal joined her in one of the songs. "At every show, people request songs, and this time they requested 'Bo vehabek oti' ('Come and Hug Me'). My Michal was in the audience and I invited her to come up and sing. She sings beautifully. In terms of its strength, her voice is similar to mine, but not in the range." What type of singers do you admire? "Those whom I believe: Yehudit Ravitz, Arik Einstein, Shalom Hanoch and Shlomi Shaban. I'm sure I've forgotten some other excellent singers right now. And, of course, I really love Chava Alberstein, and also Rona Keinan and Sheila Ferber." What is it about them that you believe? "The texts, the melody, the intention. I don't feel like there's any posturing going on." Do you like the singer Ninet and the others from the TV show 'A Star is Born'? "I'm fairly indifferent to pop. I don't get excited about it, but there are times when I am very impressed by all the trappings of the show, by the whole experience. Sometimes I can also be very put off by it." What do you see in the image that's reflected in the mirror? Are you afraid of getting old? "I'll never be completely happy with myself, and I have the feeling that I don't really like people who are completely happy with themselves. But what's important is that I do look, that I see the flaws, that I don't shove aside things that aren't comfortable for me, in all areas of life. And I don't feel old at all. These days, no one is old at age 57." You're coming to terms easily with the passing years? "No. But I'm not really afraid of it either. Meanwhile, I'm also okay with my figure. Maybe because I don't see so well anymore. The body - knock on wood - isn't betraying me yet. For the soul, getting older does only good things, and this profession of mine that has been with me now for so many years is also being put into perspective. I care less about what people will write in the talkbacks and whether the audience will love the album. The important thing is that I'm doing it. I love to sing, I'm very happy that my voice isn't ruined, I'm very grateful I can do this. I hope that I won't become pathetic. When I was 40, a friend told me that curls after age 40 are pathetic. As you can see, it didn't have much of an effect on me."W Bookmark to del.icio.us   Hezbollah abduction How the Lebanese militia captured two IDF reservists in 2006, illustrated in pictures. Kuntar's crimes Israeli YouTube video details the 1979 terror attack perpetrated by Samir Kuntar.

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