Cantor Samantha Natov of Brooklyn, N.Y. joins the Farmington Valley Jewish Congregation-Emek Shalom in Simsbury for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. Currently in her fifth year of rabbinical school, Natov was ordained as a cantor in 2006 by the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Among her previous appointments, she served as a student cantor at B’nai Israel in Southbury and, more recently, she was a bar/bat mitzvah tutor and adjunct cantor in Brooklyn Heights Synagogue and ritual music educator/leader at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn.

A native of Toronto, she received a Bachelor of Music degree from McGill University in Montreal, and holds three Master’s degrees: Master’s of Musicology from University of Virginia, and a Master of Hebrew Letters and another in Sacred Music from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.