Cantor Robert Abelson
Born in Brooklyn, Robert Paul Abelson has lived in or near New York his whole life. He is a graduate of the School of Sacred Music of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, on whose faculty he now serves. A member for many seasons of the New York City Opera, he has also sung with other prestigious operatic companies, such as the Seattle Opera Associations, St. Paul Opera, and the Goldovsky Opera Theatre. He has appeared in concert with many orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony, and the Mostly Mozart Festival. Robert Paul Abelson has specialized in Yiddish Art Song and under the guidance of the late distinguished composer, Lazar Weiner, he performed works of neglected Jewish composers in addition to Mr. Weiner’s own inspiring pieces. Robert Paul Abelson has appeared in film, television, and the theatre. He was one of the stars of the Jewish musical review, ON SECOND AVENUE. Most recently Robert Abelson had a starring role in the Broadway music hit, THOSE WERE THE DAYS, which completed a nationwide tour. He is presently serving as Cantor at Temple Israel in the City of New York.
Rabbi Nathaniel D. Benjamin
Nathaniel D. Benjamin is the founding Rabbi of Chavurah Beth Shalom, a positiion he has held since 1991. Following his investiture as Cantor in 1977 from Herzeliah Jewish Teacher's Seminary and his rabbinical ordination several years later from The New Seminary, Rabbinical Seminary International, Rabbi Benjamin has served congregations in New York and New Jersey. Prior to the establishment of our Chavurah, he served as Cantor of Temple Sinai in Tenafly from 1978-1991. He has also served at Riverdale Temple in New York City and Temple Beth Shalom in Clifton, New Jersey. Rabbi Benjamin is a past President of The Jewish Ministers Cantors Association, where he presently serves as Vice President. He is also a member of the Rabbinical Fellowship of America. Rabbi/Cantor Benjamin is best known in his community as the founder of the annual Cantors Concert at The Jewish Community Center on the Palisades. In addition to his duties as a spiritual leader of the Chavurah, his pastoral activities include counseling for interfaith families and couples.
Mary Feinsinger
Mary Feinsinger was born in New York City. A graduate of Barnard College, she also has a Master's Degree in voice from The Juilliard School. She is on the Extension Division voice faculty of the Mannes College of Music in New York, was for many years on the piano accompanying staff at Juilliard, and has music directed many productions in New York. As composer/arranger and editor at Transcontinental Music Company , she produced, arranged and music directed several CDs‹the most recent of which is Kol Dodi: Jewish Music for Weddings. She is currently active as a composer/lyricist in the BMI/Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop.
Israel Goldstein
Israel Goldstein, was born in London England. As a child, he was the soloist in the choir at the New Synagogue in London, where his father, the late Jacob Goldstein, was Cantor. In the United States, Cantor Goldstein studied at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, School of Sacred Music, where he received his M.A. degree and investiture as Cantor. He has served as a member of the faculty for many years and is presently the director of the School of Sacred Music. Cantor Goldstein is the Cantor of the Jericho Jewish Center, Jericho, Long Island. He has also officiated and concertized in London, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and major cities throughout the United States and Canada. He is the soloist on four archival recordings of Great Synagogue Composers. In October 1993 he sang a recital at the Old Jewish Theatre in Odessa, Ukraine. This event was part of the Second International Festival of Jewish Art Music. Israel Goldstein's accomplishments have not been limited to singing. He has written the piano accompaniments to two publications published by the Cantors Assembly, the weekday "Maariv Service" and "Tfilot Moshe;" both volumes were composed by Cantor Moshe Ganchoff. He also wrote the accompaniment to the prayer "Magein Avot" also written by Moshe Ganchoff and published by Transcontinental Music. Sacred Music Press recently published four of his liturgical compositions entitled B'chol Levacha Uv'chol Naf Sh'cha.
Ellen Gould
Ellen Gould (actress/singer/writer) is best known for her double Emmy award-winning musical “Bubble Meises” (Off broadway, PBS Television) which she continues to tour throughout the country. Ellen is currently working on a new project – her first full length play – “The Family Trust.” In between, she can be seen most Shabbats at the New Shul (the 5 year-old downtown synagogue for “artist types” Ellen co-founded) where she is currently playing the role of the Cantor.
Mark Kligman
Mark Kligman, Ph.D., is Professor of Jewish Musicology at UCLA, holder of the Mickey Katz Chair, and Director to the Milken Fund for Jewish Music. Formerly Professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York where he taught in the School of Sacred Music, Kligman was educated at the University of Michigan and New York University; he earned his doctorate at NYU in 1997. He specializes in the liturgical traditions of Middle Eastern Jewish communities. Dr. Kligman has published several articles on the liturgy of Syrian Jews. His work also extends to historical trends in the liturgical music of Ashkenazic and Sephardic traditions; his entry "Music in Judaism" was recently published in The Encyclopedia of Judaism (2000). He was the editor of the Jewish terms in Worship Music: a Concise Dictionary (2000), a dictionary covering liturgical music. In the Spring of 2001 he was a Research Fellow & Visiting Professor at the Center for Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, where he pursued research on contemporary trends in Jewish music. An article on this topic appears in the American Jewish Yearbook 2001. He lives with is wife, daughter and son in Los Angeles.
Lydia Kontos
Lydia Kontos is the Executive Director of the Kaufman Music Center (formerly the Hebrew Arts School) since 1986, and is the co-founder and President of the Special Music School, a public/private partnership between the Kaufman Center and the New York City Department of Education. During her tenure at the helm of the Kaufman Center, enrollment at the Center¹s Lucy Moses School has nearly tripled, and the Center¹s Merkin Concert Hall has become known as one of the foremost presenters of contemporary music. Mrs. Kontos received her B.A. in Anthropology from Hunter College, and pursued an M.S. in Nonprofit Management at New York University.
Michael Leavitt
Michael Leavitt is Managing Director of MPL Productions, Inc., which produces, advertises and markets the arts. In addition to the American Society for Jewish Music, he has served on the Boards of the Museum of Yiddish Theater, Chorus America, The Mendelssohn Project, and the Institute for Study and Advancement of Boychoir. For more than 35 years, Michael Leavitt, through MPL Productions, Empire Music Group, a record distributorship, and Allied Artists Bureau, a management firm, he has produced, managed and promoted the performing arts, working with such organizations as Amor Artis, the Gregg Smith Singers, Horizon Concerts, the Beethoven Society, the MTA (Music Under New York), and with dancers from New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, as well as an array of distinguished individual performers. He has produced more than 50 recordings, three of which have been nominated for Grammy Awards, and written an award-winning radio series heard by more than 350 million listeners.
Cantor David Lefkowitz
Until his retirement, David Lefkowitz was Senior Cantor at Park Avenue Synagogue when he succeeded Hazzan David J. Putterman in 1976. He is a contemporary and traditional cantor, concert artist, composer, and music researcher. His honors include the David Putterman Award from the Cantor’s Assembly (May ’03) for Lifetime Achievement in the Cantorate, and a 2003-04 appointment to the Rabbinical Assembly Law Committee. In 2001, The Goethe Institute featured Cantor Lefkowitz in St. Petersburg, Russia, in a presentation of Kurt Weill’s Jewish lieder at the International Film Festival’s premiere of a Kurt Weill documentary film. In 2002, Lefkowitz participated in the 10th Anniversary Music Festival at the Europaisches Zentrum fur Judische Musik in Hanover, Germany – both as cantorial concert artist and academic scholar. Cantor Lefkowitz has composed prolifically and has rescued and edited rare synagogue works from many periods and styles. He received his professional training at the University of Pittsburgh, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the Julliard School. He is a Past President of the American Society for Jewish Music, Vice-President and Music Director of the David Nowakowsky Foundation, and faculty member of the School of Sacred Music at Hebrew Union College.
Cantor Leon Lissek
Born in Paris, Cantor Leon Lissek is well-known for his melodic tenor voice and his wide repertoire of music. Appearing at concerts, music events and community gatherings in major cities throughout the USA and Canada he gained national prominence. He served as Cantor at Congregation B’nai Amoona in St. Louis, Missouri, for 30 years and is now Cantor Emeritus. He has also achieved fame for his original music compositions. At Jewish Theological Semniary he studied with Cantor Moshe Taube and Cantor Max Wohlberg. Upon graduation he accepted a position with a Philadelphia congregation before moving to St. Louis in 1969. Cantor Leon Lissek has actively promoted Jewish music and culture during his long and illustrious career.
Joel Mandelbaum
Joel Mandelbaum is an American composer and teacher, best known for his use of microtonal tuning (notably the Just Intonation Tuning). He wrote the first Ph.D. dissertation (Indiana University on microtonality in 1961. In spite of being well-know for exploring alternate tunings, Mandelbaul still uses convential tuning in about 80% of his music. He attributes his use of convential tuning to his reluctance to use keyed instruments (such as woodwinds) in tunings other than those for which they were designed. He was a teacher at Queens College of the City University of New York from 1961 to 1999, and was Chairman of the Music Department. He is married to stained glass artist Ellen Mandelbaum, and is the nephew of Abraham Edel.
Rabbi Henry D. Michelman
Rabbi Henry D. Michelman is Chairman of ASJM. He was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He served as rabbi of Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes,"The Kane Street Synagogue" in Brooklyn were he succeeded his grandfather, Rabbi Israel Goldfarb, the noted composer of Synagogue music. He then served as Assistant to the Chancellor of the Seminary and later as Executive Vice President of the Synagogue Council of America. He is now a composer, having scored TV films for A&E, PBS, CNBC and ABC. His current commissions include music for Synagogues and churches.
Dr. Arbie Orenstein
Arbie Orenstein was born and raised in New York City, attending the High School of Music and Art, Queens College, and Columbia Graduate School, where he received a PhD in Musicology. He is the author of Ravel: Man and Musician, Columbia University Press, 1975 (reissued as a Dover paperback in 1991), and A Ravel Reader, Columbia University Press, 1990 (reissued as a Dover paperback in 2003), originally written in French as Ravel: Lettres, Ecrots, Entretiens, published by Flammarion in 1989. As a pianist, he has accompanied many outstanding cantos and has recorded the world premieres of several works by Ravel which he discovered in France while on a United States Government Fulbright grant. Dr. Orenstein is a professor of Music at Queens College, where he teaches a course in Jewish music. He has written an introductory essay on the life and work of A.Z. Idelsohn for the Dover reprint of Idelsohn's classic text,Jewish Music in Its Historical Development, and was recently knighted by the French government, receiving the medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
Professor Joyce Rosenzweig
Joyce Rosenzweig performs as a pianist and conductor in concerts throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Israel. A native of Houston, she has been a featured soloist with the New Orleans Philharmonic and the Texas Festival Orchestra, and has appeared in recital at the National Holocaust Museum and Corcoran Gallery in Washington. D.C., the Dame Myra Hess Concert series in Chicago, the Bronfman Centre in Montreal, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and in Carnegie Hall in New York. She has collaborated with ensembles from the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, and has participated in the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), the Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom Music Festival, the Round Top Music Festival (Texas), the Ashkenaz Festival of New Yiddish Culture (Toronto), the Chicago and Charlotte Yiddish Institutes, the North American Jewish Choral Festival, and the Franz Schubert Institute (Vienna), where she was awarded first prize in lieder accompaniment. Most recently she performed concerts in Prague, Budapest, Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Amsterdam, Boston, and Halifax. A leading figure in Jewish music and in the education of cantors and synagogue musicians, Ms. Rosenzweig serves as Artist-in-Residence at Hebrew Union College in New York, where she teaches courses in Yiddish, Israeli, and Sephardic song, harmonization of the synagogue modes, and is the conductor of the School of Sacred Music Choir. She is a sought-after performer, coach, lecturer, and authority on Jewish music repertoire and performance style, and has collaborated in concert with most of the great cantors of this generation. Her arrangements and improvisations on Yiddish folk songs are well-known, and can be heard on several CDs. Ms. Rosezweig is Music Director of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in Manhattan.
Boaz Tarsi
Boaz Tarsi's compositions for chamber ensembles, orchestra, chorus, voice, and solo instruments have been performed, recorded, and broadcast throughout the United States, Europe, and Israel. He has published and read internationally on the topics of the theory of Jewish prayer music and on Arnold Schoenberg and George Rochberg. Among his publications are contributions to Asian Music, Modern Judaism, Indiana Theory Review, Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies, Musica Judaica, Conservative Judaism, Journal of Synagogue Music, and Music in time. Boaz Tarsi holds a doctorate from Cornell University. He is an associate professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
Dr. Judith B. Tischler
Dr. Judith B. Tischler is currently a Professor of Music at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City. She was the Director/Senior Editor of Transcontinental Music Publications from 1981 until her retirement from this position in 2000. She holds a B.A. (Phi Bet Kappa, Suma cum Laude) from the City College of New York and a M.A. in Composition from the City University of New York. She completed her DSM at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Before beginning her advanced studies, Dr. Tischler lived in Israel where she played French Horn with the Radio and Opera Orchestras and was a substitute for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra from which she received a scholarship for study at the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. She currently resides both in Israel and the U.S.
Dr. Matthew Zuckerbraun
Dr. Matthew Zuckerbraun,our newest board member, is a financial advisor. He is President of Zuckerbraun Argyle Associates, and avid amatuer choral singer.
Born in Brooklyn, Robert Paul Abelson has lived in or near New York his whole life. He is a graduate of the School of Sacred Music of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, on whose faculty he now serves. A member for many seasons of the New York City Opera, he has also sung with other prestigious operatic companies, such as the Seattle Opera Associations, St. Paul Opera, and the Goldovsky Opera Theatre. He has appeared in concert with many orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony, and the Mostly Mozart Festival. Robert Paul Abelson has specialized in Yiddish Art Song and under the guidance of the late distinguished composer, Lazar Weiner, he performed works of neglected Jewish composers in addition to Mr. Weiner’s own inspiring pieces. Robert Paul Abelson has appeared in film, television, and the theatre. He was one of the stars of the Jewish musical review, ON SECOND AVENUE. Most recently Robert Abelson had a starring role in the Broadway music hit, THOSE WERE THE DAYS, which completed a nationwide tour. He is presently serving as Cantor at Temple Israel in the City of New York.
Rabbi Nathaniel D. Benjamin
Nathaniel D. Benjamin is the founding Rabbi of Chavurah Beth Shalom, a positiion he has held since 1991. Following his investiture as Cantor in 1977 from Herzeliah Jewish Teacher's Seminary and his rabbinical ordination several years later from The New Seminary, Rabbinical Seminary International, Rabbi Benjamin has served congregations in New York and New Jersey. Prior to the establishment of our Chavurah, he served as Cantor of Temple Sinai in Tenafly from 1978-1991. He has also served at Riverdale Temple in New York City and Temple Beth Shalom in Clifton, New Jersey. Rabbi Benjamin is a past President of The Jewish Ministers Cantors Association, where he presently serves as Vice President. He is also a member of the Rabbinical Fellowship of America. Rabbi/Cantor Benjamin is best known in his community as the founder of the annual Cantors Concert at The Jewish Community Center on the Palisades. In addition to his duties as a spiritual leader of the Chavurah, his pastoral activities include counseling for interfaith families and couples.
Mary Feinsinger
Mary Feinsinger was born in New York City. A graduate of Barnard College, she also has a Master's Degree in voice from The Juilliard School. She is on the Extension Division voice faculty of the Mannes College of Music in New York, was for many years on the piano accompanying staff at Juilliard, and has music directed many productions in New York. As composer/arranger and editor at Transcontinental Music Company , she produced, arranged and music directed several CDs‹the most recent of which is Kol Dodi: Jewish Music for Weddings. She is currently active as a composer/lyricist in the BMI/Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop.
Israel Goldstein
Israel Goldstein, was born in London England. As a child, he was the soloist in the choir at the New Synagogue in London, where his father, the late Jacob Goldstein, was Cantor. In the United States, Cantor Goldstein studied at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, School of Sacred Music, where he received his M.A. degree and investiture as Cantor. He has served as a member of the faculty for many years and is presently the director of the School of Sacred Music. Cantor Goldstein is the Cantor of the Jericho Jewish Center, Jericho, Long Island. He has also officiated and concertized in London, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and major cities throughout the United States and Canada. He is the soloist on four archival recordings of Great Synagogue Composers. In October 1993 he sang a recital at the Old Jewish Theatre in Odessa, Ukraine. This event was part of the Second International Festival of Jewish Art Music. Israel Goldstein's accomplishments have not been limited to singing. He has written the piano accompaniments to two publications published by the Cantors Assembly, the weekday "Maariv Service" and "Tfilot Moshe;" both volumes were composed by Cantor Moshe Ganchoff. He also wrote the accompaniment to the prayer "Magein Avot" also written by Moshe Ganchoff and published by Transcontinental Music. Sacred Music Press recently published four of his liturgical compositions entitled B'chol Levacha Uv'chol Naf Sh'cha.
Ellen Gould
Ellen Gould (actress/singer/writer) is best known for her double Emmy award-winning musical “Bubble Meises” (Off broadway, PBS Television) which she continues to tour throughout the country. Ellen is currently working on a new project – her first full length play – “The Family Trust.” In between, she can be seen most Shabbats at the New Shul (the 5 year-old downtown synagogue for “artist types” Ellen co-founded) where she is currently playing the role of the Cantor.
Mark Kligman
Mark Kligman, Ph.D., is Professor of Jewish Musicology at UCLA, holder of the Mickey Katz Chair, and Director to the Milken Fund for Jewish Music. Formerly Professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York where he taught in the School of Sacred Music, Kligman was educated at the University of Michigan and New York University; he earned his doctorate at NYU in 1997. He specializes in the liturgical traditions of Middle Eastern Jewish communities. Dr. Kligman has published several articles on the liturgy of Syrian Jews. His work also extends to historical trends in the liturgical music of Ashkenazic and Sephardic traditions; his entry "Music in Judaism" was recently published in The Encyclopedia of Judaism (2000). He was the editor of the Jewish terms in Worship Music: a Concise Dictionary (2000), a dictionary covering liturgical music. In the Spring of 2001 he was a Research Fellow & Visiting Professor at the Center for Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, where he pursued research on contemporary trends in Jewish music. An article on this topic appears in the American Jewish Yearbook 2001. He lives with is wife, daughter and son in Los Angeles.
Lydia Kontos
Lydia Kontos is the Executive Director of the Kaufman Music Center (formerly the Hebrew Arts School) since 1986, and is the co-founder and President of the Special Music School, a public/private partnership between the Kaufman Center and the New York City Department of Education. During her tenure at the helm of the Kaufman Center, enrollment at the Center¹s Lucy Moses School has nearly tripled, and the Center¹s Merkin Concert Hall has become known as one of the foremost presenters of contemporary music. Mrs. Kontos received her B.A. in Anthropology from Hunter College, and pursued an M.S. in Nonprofit Management at New York University.
Michael Leavitt
Michael Leavitt is Managing Director of MPL Productions, Inc., which produces, advertises and markets the arts. In addition to the American Society for Jewish Music, he has served on the Boards of the Museum of Yiddish Theater, Chorus America, The Mendelssohn Project, and the Institute for Study and Advancement of Boychoir. For more than 35 years, Michael Leavitt, through MPL Productions, Empire Music Group, a record distributorship, and Allied Artists Bureau, a management firm, he has produced, managed and promoted the performing arts, working with such organizations as Amor Artis, the Gregg Smith Singers, Horizon Concerts, the Beethoven Society, the MTA (Music Under New York), and with dancers from New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, as well as an array of distinguished individual performers. He has produced more than 50 recordings, three of which have been nominated for Grammy Awards, and written an award-winning radio series heard by more than 350 million listeners.
Cantor David Lefkowitz
Until his retirement, David Lefkowitz was Senior Cantor at Park Avenue Synagogue when he succeeded Hazzan David J. Putterman in 1976. He is a contemporary and traditional cantor, concert artist, composer, and music researcher. His honors include the David Putterman Award from the Cantor’s Assembly (May ’03) for Lifetime Achievement in the Cantorate, and a 2003-04 appointment to the Rabbinical Assembly Law Committee. In 2001, The Goethe Institute featured Cantor Lefkowitz in St. Petersburg, Russia, in a presentation of Kurt Weill’s Jewish lieder at the International Film Festival’s premiere of a Kurt Weill documentary film. In 2002, Lefkowitz participated in the 10th Anniversary Music Festival at the Europaisches Zentrum fur Judische Musik in Hanover, Germany – both as cantorial concert artist and academic scholar. Cantor Lefkowitz has composed prolifically and has rescued and edited rare synagogue works from many periods and styles. He received his professional training at the University of Pittsburgh, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the Julliard School. He is a Past President of the American Society for Jewish Music, Vice-President and Music Director of the David Nowakowsky Foundation, and faculty member of the School of Sacred Music at Hebrew Union College.
Cantor Leon Lissek
Born in Paris, Cantor Leon Lissek is well-known for his melodic tenor voice and his wide repertoire of music. Appearing at concerts, music events and community gatherings in major cities throughout the USA and Canada he gained national prominence. He served as Cantor at Congregation B’nai Amoona in St. Louis, Missouri, for 30 years and is now Cantor Emeritus. He has also achieved fame for his original music compositions. At Jewish Theological Semniary he studied with Cantor Moshe Taube and Cantor Max Wohlberg. Upon graduation he accepted a position with a Philadelphia congregation before moving to St. Louis in 1969. Cantor Leon Lissek has actively promoted Jewish music and culture during his long and illustrious career.
Joel Mandelbaum
Joel Mandelbaum is an American composer and teacher, best known for his use of microtonal tuning (notably the Just Intonation Tuning). He wrote the first Ph.D. dissertation (Indiana University on microtonality in 1961. In spite of being well-know for exploring alternate tunings, Mandelbaul still uses convential tuning in about 80% of his music. He attributes his use of convential tuning to his reluctance to use keyed instruments (such as woodwinds) in tunings other than those for which they were designed. He was a teacher at Queens College of the City University of New York from 1961 to 1999, and was Chairman of the Music Department. He is married to stained glass artist Ellen Mandelbaum, and is the nephew of Abraham Edel.
Rabbi Henry D. Michelman
Rabbi Henry D. Michelman is Chairman of ASJM. He was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He served as rabbi of Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes,"The Kane Street Synagogue" in Brooklyn were he succeeded his grandfather, Rabbi Israel Goldfarb, the noted composer of Synagogue music. He then served as Assistant to the Chancellor of the Seminary and later as Executive Vice President of the Synagogue Council of America. He is now a composer, having scored TV films for A&E, PBS, CNBC and ABC. His current commissions include music for Synagogues and churches.
Dr. Arbie Orenstein
Arbie Orenstein was born and raised in New York City, attending the High School of Music and Art, Queens College, and Columbia Graduate School, where he received a PhD in Musicology. He is the author of Ravel: Man and Musician, Columbia University Press, 1975 (reissued as a Dover paperback in 1991), and A Ravel Reader, Columbia University Press, 1990 (reissued as a Dover paperback in 2003), originally written in French as Ravel: Lettres, Ecrots, Entretiens, published by Flammarion in 1989. As a pianist, he has accompanied many outstanding cantos and has recorded the world premieres of several works by Ravel which he discovered in France while on a United States Government Fulbright grant. Dr. Orenstein is a professor of Music at Queens College, where he teaches a course in Jewish music. He has written an introductory essay on the life and work of A.Z. Idelsohn for the Dover reprint of Idelsohn's classic text,Jewish Music in Its Historical Development, and was recently knighted by the French government, receiving the medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
Professor Joyce Rosenzweig
Joyce Rosenzweig performs as a pianist and conductor in concerts throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Israel. A native of Houston, she has been a featured soloist with the New Orleans Philharmonic and the Texas Festival Orchestra, and has appeared in recital at the National Holocaust Museum and Corcoran Gallery in Washington. D.C., the Dame Myra Hess Concert series in Chicago, the Bronfman Centre in Montreal, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and in Carnegie Hall in New York. She has collaborated with ensembles from the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, and has participated in the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), the Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom Music Festival, the Round Top Music Festival (Texas), the Ashkenaz Festival of New Yiddish Culture (Toronto), the Chicago and Charlotte Yiddish Institutes, the North American Jewish Choral Festival, and the Franz Schubert Institute (Vienna), where she was awarded first prize in lieder accompaniment. Most recently she performed concerts in Prague, Budapest, Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Amsterdam, Boston, and Halifax. A leading figure in Jewish music and in the education of cantors and synagogue musicians, Ms. Rosenzweig serves as Artist-in-Residence at Hebrew Union College in New York, where she teaches courses in Yiddish, Israeli, and Sephardic song, harmonization of the synagogue modes, and is the conductor of the School of Sacred Music Choir. She is a sought-after performer, coach, lecturer, and authority on Jewish music repertoire and performance style, and has collaborated in concert with most of the great cantors of this generation. Her arrangements and improvisations on Yiddish folk songs are well-known, and can be heard on several CDs. Ms. Rosezweig is Music Director of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in Manhattan.
Boaz Tarsi
Boaz Tarsi's compositions for chamber ensembles, orchestra, chorus, voice, and solo instruments have been performed, recorded, and broadcast throughout the United States, Europe, and Israel. He has published and read internationally on the topics of the theory of Jewish prayer music and on Arnold Schoenberg and George Rochberg. Among his publications are contributions to Asian Music, Modern Judaism, Indiana Theory Review, Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies, Musica Judaica, Conservative Judaism, Journal of Synagogue Music, and Music in time. Boaz Tarsi holds a doctorate from Cornell University. He is an associate professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
Dr. Judith B. Tischler
Dr. Judith B. Tischler is currently a Professor of Music at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City. She was the Director/Senior Editor of Transcontinental Music Publications from 1981 until her retirement from this position in 2000. She holds a B.A. (Phi Bet Kappa, Suma cum Laude) from the City College of New York and a M.A. in Composition from the City University of New York. She completed her DSM at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Before beginning her advanced studies, Dr. Tischler lived in Israel where she played French Horn with the Radio and Opera Orchestras and was a substitute for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra from which she received a scholarship for study at the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. She currently resides both in Israel and the U.S.
Dr. Matthew Zuckerbraun
Dr. Matthew Zuckerbraun,our newest board member, is a financial advisor. He is President of Zuckerbraun Argyle Associates, and avid amatuer choral singer.