Member Profile

June:  Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Jeff:    Born in Buffalo, NY. Eldest of three.  Dad a dentist, mom a very fine singer and music teacher.  Both master gardeners.  Religious Jewish upbringing (I was always in school—secular school like everyone else, and Hebrew school an additional 8 hours a week. Not to mention a 3-hour synagogue service on Saturday morning). Began piano studies at 6, and discovered I had a good voice at 12. 

When I was a teenager my piano teacher told me I shouldn’t practice 6 hours a day: “If you ever have your name in lights, it will be as a singer, not a pianist.”  (This, mind you, on the basis of my singing her the Tin Man’s song from the Wizard of Oz.)  High school and summer stock plays and musicals (the most fun I ever had was performing in plays—to this day I love theater best).  

College at the University of Chicago, where, within a year, I abandoned most of the strict rules of Jewish observance I was raised with. Studied in the New Collegiate Division, which allowed for combining different disciplines and substantial independent study. (A fancy way of saying I had no idea what I wanted to do.  I flirted with medical school, until chemistry undid me. My first year “Great Books” teacher told me “A man does best what he loves most,” and that was that…..I chose humanities.)  

Spent a lot of time with musicians outside Hyde Park, which led me to London in 1978 for a year of singing.  Met the great French baritone Gérard Souzay in Evanston at a master class in 1977.  Wasn’t allowed to sing in the class because I wasn’t a Northwestern student, but my teacher (Elsa Charlston)—who did not accept defeat—dragged me backstage to meet him. He gave me his address in Paris and told me to look him up if I was ever there.  I bet he was shocked when I appeared at his doorstep the next year.  

Before I got there, though, I was going to concerts and theatre in London and having a fine old time but not really applying myself.  Hearing about this from mutual friends, Elsa sent me a one-sentence letter:  “Get your act together and your ass to Paris.” So I did. Arriving at the Gare du Nord on a snowy January evening, I found my way to the home of Souzay’s rehearsal accompanist (I had met her in Chicago), whose husband had been the Dutch ambassador to Japan.  

Her apartment in the 16th arrondissement was filled with Japanese art. I think this was the beginning of my love affair with Japanese culture.  She threw a party for Souzay after his performance of Schubert’s Winterreise at the Salle Pleyel.  It was like a 19th C salon. A room filled with Souzay’s admirers, hangers-on, and friends, eating exquisite French finger food, smoking, and speaking a mélange of 5 languages—French, Dutch, German, Japanese, English. 

A number of people sang for Souzay, but I wasn’t one of them….until late in the night, smoke filling the room, when he said “sing something for me.”  It was like a dare, but I was ready.  I sang a Purcell air and a couple of Schumann Lieder, my eyes stinging from the smoke. I apologized for interrupting the evening.  He said “You have no need to apologize.” 

Later, as he left, he took me aside and said, “Can you come next week at 5 pm?”  So I started studying with him in Paris.  He offered me more lessons than I could take. (I was performing in London and couldn’t always get to Paris.) Meanwhile, I studied singing technique with Yvonne Rodd-Marling in London. Her lessons lasted all morning at her home in South Kensington.  Students gathered at 10. Each of us sang for 20 minutes and then sat down and listened to the other lessons.  Then we had tea.  Sometimes we didn’t leave until 1.    

It was idyllic, and in retrospect I wish I had stayed longer. But I returned to Chicago and went to law school.  How could I do such a thing?  Well, “smart Jewish boys,” at least those in my orbit at that time, did not—repeat, did not—attempt careers in the arts, Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas (my hero at the time) notwithstanding.  Nor did they gallivant around Europe for years on end. They went to professional school.  

For my part, I wasn’t confident, at 22, that I could have the kind of music career I wanted (that is, in the first tier). I thought studying law at the University of Chicago would be an interesting academic pursuit.  Perhaps I could become the Jewish Rumpole. I figured I would eventually teach. And maybe I could sing a little, too.  (Years later, when I complained to Elsa—the voice teacher who launched me to Paris—that I felt like I was doing two things half-assed, she said “this is exactly what you planned all along:  to earn a living from the law so you could sing and not have to earn a living from music.  You knew all along what you wanted.  And you did it.”)  

Law school was interesting, for a while, especially courses on jurisprudence and work in the legal clinic for the underrepresented, including the South Austin Community Coalition, a fair housing organization not far from where I live now.  I got a job at a one of the major Chicago firms, filled with smart and interesting people who discussed modern art, the state of the world, travel, opera—all things that interested me. They were excellent lawyers, devoted to public interest work. They liked that I was a serious musician. 

I did well. (I’m still there, 36 years later.)  Following the path I started at the legal clinic, I did meaningful pro bono work, which has given me some of the greatest satisfaction as a lawyer. For several years I was involved in the Guantánamo cases, helping detainees challenge their detention in federal court. Recently I helped on an asylum case for a woman who was mutilated by al Shabaab.  (Granted.)  I also have worked on death penalty issues.  I’ll never forget a meeting I had with a death row inmate in Tennessee. He had an appalling childhood (raped by his father, and that wasn’t all) and mental health issues, none of which were presented as mitigating factors at his sentencing by his incompetent lawyer.  We talked for an hour at Riverbend, Nashville’s maximum security prison, just steps from the death house. 

I was downcast for him, and for the prospects of abolishing the death penalty. I told him how I felt.  So he gave me a pep talk.  Said he is up every day at 5 to meditate.  I told him I also meditate. He reads Thich Nhat Hanh. I told him I do, too. He hugged me hard when we said good-bye. “Never give up. Tell my story. Make sure it is heard.” He has excellent lawyers now. Last I heard he is still alive.

To become a partner at my firm, I had to work very hard.  It was challenging and stressful, and I gave up singing for 5 or 6 years.  I did make it, but in the early 90s I returned to singing with abandon.  It was necessary for my soul and my mental health. I got some nice gigs in Toronto, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and other places (in addition to Chicago). One thing led to another (word of mouth is very important in the music business), and suddenly I had a career in music as well as in law.  

Balancing two high level careers isn’t easy, and it caused a lot of stress. Sometimes I crashed and burned. But overall it seems to have worked.  The firm has been very supportive of my artistic adventures. And many of my musician friends envy me having a steady job. Now, at 61 and approaching retirement, I’m glad I found the time (and the energy) to have a musical life as well as a legal career.  I suppose I was never meant to be a full-time lawyer or a full-time singer.  After all, I’m the fellow who couldn’t pick a major in college. 

Here are a couple of links to performances I’ve done. (If you’re interested you can find other info by Googling “Jeffrey Strauss baritone.”) The first is a short recitative from Handel’s Messiah, which I have performed a lot.  It was recorded live at the Harris Theater here in Chicago in 2005.  The second is from a semi-staged dramatic presentation of Bach’s St. John Passion, which I did with my partner’s orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, in Cleveland and New York in 2016. And the last is from a 50th anniversary performance of Fiddler on the Roof at the Lancaster Opera House in Buffalo in 2014.

https://youtu.be/WmytFG1h_os  (Messiah)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_lASVZ9Irs&t=105s&list=PLRf3TawkO8K_TsH8daeFB_rBcHmJHgm5s&index=19  (St. John Passion)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN6Me1ejhl0&index=12&list=PLRf3TawkO8K_TsH8daeFB_rBcHmJHgm5s (Fiddler on the Roof)

June:  What is your spiritual practice?

Jeff:  This is a tough one.  I don’t know how to talk about it.  I’ve tried a lot of different paths through the years:  Hatha yoga. Devotional chant (kirtan).  The Japanese tea ceremony (my sensei told me “you don’t need a guru, just making tea and cleaning up, that is practice”).  Egalitarian Jewish renewal groups that focus on “Tikkun Olam”—repair of the world. On my 50th birthday I went to the Berkeley Zen Center to sit at 5:30 am and have an oryoki meal (I had no idea what I was doing, but a kind person helped me).  I studied for a time with Joshin at the Zen Community of Oak Park when it was at the house on Humphrey.  

I’ve certainly had “spiritual” experiences when, during a performance, I make a special connection with someone in the audience, or a fellow performer on stage.  In that moment, there is a sense of intimacy, openness, and self-expression that I sometimes find difficult to achieve in daily life.  In my Japanese garden, or in the mountains outside Boulder, I find some peace.  Mud under the fingernails helps. (I once objected to someone tracking mud into the house, and she looked at me and said:  “It’s earth.  It’s where we live.”)  I suppose my practice is trying to find those moments of spaciousness and openness every day.  I’ve taken some emotional beatings in my life—many self-inflicted—and I need to learn to be kind to myself.  That is my practice now, and it’s not easy.    

June:  What drew you to ZLMC and how has it helped?

Jeff:  I met you and Joshin in 2004, I think, at a Japanese art fair in Evanston.  I gave a little talk for a tea ceremony demonstration by my sensei, and you had a table downstairs.  I could hardly believe that there was a Zen meditation group in Oak Park. I came for a time—maybe a year or two—but it didn’t stick.  I don’t know why. It was hard to get up early to sit and then go to work. I wasn’t prepared for jukai. I’ll admit I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the change in format from a formal zendo to ZLMC. But I now see the wisdom, and courage, in making the change. You have built a wonderful community. I have kept up a meditation and yoga practice for years, but it has recently become very difficult for me to practice on my own. I need and want the support of a sangha that accepts me as I am, and lets me develop my practice—whatever it may be—at my own pace.  I think ZLMC is that place.