“I thought I was going to be an opera singer, and I was really hardcore for awhile. My opera coach was [the late opera singer] Nico Castel. He just happened to share my Sephardic background, which was totally coincidental and serendipitous. So in between our opera coachings, he started teaching me traditional classical Ladino repertoire. And we decided to start incorporating some of those songs in my recitals at the Israel Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv. Without fail, at every concert, audience members would come up to me and tell me that the Ladino portion was their favorite part. And I agreed with them. I sang differently or with more passion because that's really where my heart was. I could relate to that music in a way that I couldn't to, you know, dead white men, classical opera.There was something exotic and mystical about the songs themselves.”