Comments (1) New for the Holidays! This recently added album features music composed especially for the High Holy Days by Cantor Meir Finkelstein who also conducts the orchestra. It features the voices of Cantor Udi Spielman and his wife Varda.
Cantor Spielman and Cantor Finkelstein have partnered many times in the past with great success. Together they create a distinctive cantorial sound that is at once modern and traditional.
It was the “last box packed.” Now it was the last box to be unpacked. After going through 156 boxes of Cantorial, Yiddish and English-language recordings from the collection of Chicago record producer Barry Serota we stared at this box and knew that once it was opened our job of unpacking would be complete.
However, our work organizing, describing and investigating the music was just beginning!
When Barry Serota’s life suddenly ended because of a heart attack in November 2009, the world of recorded Jewish music lost one of its most respected professionals.
Barry Serota, a practicing attorney and executive director of the Institute for Jewish Sound Recording, died suddenly November 16, 2009 on a plane flight between New York and Madrid on the way to Israel.
Coming from a long line of distinguished cantors it probably should be no surprise that Cantor Deborah Katchko-Gray has devoted her life to the cantorial arts. Her understanding of the special challenges for female cantors, along with a desire to encourage others, resulted in her organizing the Women Cantors’ Network in 1982. At that time there was a great need for mutual support as female cantors generally faced exclusion from the cantorial community. Although women cantors, today, are accepted into all liberal cantorial schools and organizations the WCN continues to offer encouragement and support for women who want to participate in cantorial music.
Today Cantor Katchko-Gray carries on her family’s tradition at Temple Shearith Israel in Ridgefield, CT, where she has been cantor since 1999. Incredibly multi-talented Cantor Katchko-Gray has a repertoire that ranges from traditional liturgical solemnity to light-hearted songs for children and comedy.
Separated from other Ashkenazic Jews in 18th and 19th century Eastern Europe, the Chassids developed their own distinctive music traditions, which included chazzanuth, folk songs and nigunim.
Nigunim are unique musical expressions of Chassidic religious thought and grew out of the belief that the experience of exuberant joy was a religious duty.
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