Nee Ella Milch. Born 1954 In Haifa, Israel. Composer. Singer, pianist. Milch-Sheriff started as a child prodigy, writing her first compositions by the age of 12. While serving in the Israeli army, she continued to write and sing her songs. After army service, she returned to studies in composition under Prof. Tzvi Avni at the Rubin Academy of Music at the Tel-Aviv University where she graudated in composition. She studied vocal studies with Prof. Tamar Rachum and Dafna Cohen-Licht. Her output consists of opera, orchestral, chamber and vocal and popular music. Her works have had numerous performances in Israel and abroad. She is composer of chamber works such as: Duo for flute & Cello (1976) with recent pieces that include “A Crown they shall give unto You” for voice and orchestra based on Ladino-Flamenco folk music (premiered January 2005); “Woman in Paths” for voice and piano (premiered 2005); and “Good Night, Sweet ladies” for 3 singers, actress and orchestra (premiered 2004).…
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Israeli born clarinetist Michal Beit-Halachmi graduated from Givatayim Conservatory, where she studied with Eva Wasserman-Margolis. She continued her musical studies in the United States at Indiana University and Duquesne University, receiving her Bachelor of Music Degree in 1999. In 2002, she received her Master of Music degree from State University of New York at Stony Brook, under the tutelage of Charles Neidich. She has been a scholarship recipient of the America- Israel Cultural Foundation since 1997. She has toured Russia and Armenia with the American- Russian Young Artist Orchestra, performances at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival (Germany) and a concert in the Salzburg Festival with members of the Vienna Philharmonic. Other festival appearances include the Sarasota Chamber Music Festival, and Domaine Forget in Quebec, Canada. Ms. Beit-Halachmi has concertized extensively as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Israel and in Russia, Belgium, Hungary, Germany and the United States.…
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Noted concert critic of German original, who emigrated to Great Britain during WWII. Born, Germany 1893. Died Britain, 1977. Co-founder of “Club 1943” with Monty Jacobs and Adele Schreiber, a cultural forum for emigres in London during the war. Also worked on various newspapers. The Cultural Association had patterned itself after the Kulturbund founded in Germany when Jews lost their right to participate in mainstream cultural organizations under the Nazis.

American. Born, 1928. composer. Several websites devoted to her music appear online.
Music of Ursula Mamlok
C Michael Reese wrote reviews and this biographical sketch: “Ursula Mamlok was born in 1928 in Berlin. Her Jewish family left Germany in 1941 and had to settle for Ecuador as the US quota for German immigrants had been capped. From there she submitted handwritten compositions to American Universities until she received a full scholarship from the Mannes College in New York. She studied with George Szell at Mannes, Roger Sessions (lessons during his weekly visits to New York) and later Vittorio Giannini at the Manhattan School of Music.”

Harpist. Specializes in the history of the harp. Judy Kadar was born in New York and attended the High School of Music and the Arts. She received the B.A. in Psychology and Music at New York University. She studied harp with Lucille Lawrence at the Mannes College of Music and the masters at Sarah Lawrence College. She has lived in Berlin, Germany since 1979. In 1984, she helped establish the Historical Harp Conference in conjunction with Amherst (MA) Early Music, serving as the first director. She’s continued to be active in organizations for historical harp playing and plays harps from concert harps to Psalter to Spanish baroque harp. She plays music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance as well as Yiddish and Jewish pieces. She also plays modern Jewish music.…
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Israeli composer, primarily of small chamber works. Born in Haifa, Israel in 1972.Also known as Karen Jugend. Studied composition in Israel, Germany, France and Italy. Brief bio with photo at Israel Music Center, which has published her music.

Born, 1920 in Germany. Wrote A Harvest of Jewish Song with Vevel Pasternak. Founded the Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center in New York.

Jewish musicologist who worked in Israel. Born in Germany in 1908. She wrote: liner notes to recording: Musik der Bibel in der Tradition althebräischer Melodien. (1950); The Persian doctrine of Dastga-composition: a phenomenological study in the musical modes (1963); Migrations and mutations of the music in East and West : selected writings (1980). Gerson-Kiwi worked extensively with music of Jewish communities outside of Europe.

American. Cantor. A native of Tallahassee, Florida, Cantor Garfein graduated cum laude from Rice University s Shepherd School of Music with a degree in vocal performance and opera. In 1993, she received her Master s Degree in Sacred Music and Cantorial Investiture from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). While completing her studies at HUC-JIR, Cantor Garfein was the Director of Children s Music at Riverdale Temple, Riverdale, the Bronx, New York. While in Israel, she was a featured soloist with the Ra a na na Orchestra and the Zamir Chorale at the Jerusalem Theater in Israel. Upon graduation from HUC-JIR, she subsequently became the first Cantor of Riverdale Temple, and served in that capacity until 1999, when she was the first woman appointed as Senior Cantor of Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City.…
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Israeli ethnomusicologist. Born in 1928 in Bingen, Germany. Her contributions were made at the Jewish Research Centre of Hebrew University. She wrote about the music of ancient Israel, based on archaeology.

Born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1921. Composer. Studied later in life with Leon Schidlowsky. Lives in Israel on Kibbutz Hamapil.
Works published by Israeli Music Center

The website has information on over 40 years of the career of Esther Ofarim, one of Israel’s premier singers. Esther Ofarim was a sensation in the 1960s and 70s. She stopped concertizing for over a decade, but has since returned to the stage. She started singing in the Israëli National Theatre “Habimah”. She met, and later married, Abraham (Abi) Reichstat. After touring and recording widely in Europe and the US, winning several prizes as a duo, they later divorced. Esther continued on a solo career on the stage and on television, eventually moving back to Israel. Today she concertizes in Germany and in Israel, often accompanied by Yoni Rechter, piano. She is still remembered for winning the Israel Song Festival in 1961 with 2 songs. The website has some nice photos, reviews, and discography with sound bites.…
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(1878-1943?)
Ottilie was an outstanding contralto and sang with Caruso (in Carmen and Aida). She sang in all the major opera houses of the day. Ottilie Metzger (she added the name of her second husband to her name) was particularly admired in Wagner parts, and sang several times at Bayreuth. At least one of her appearances in New York before the first world war was reviewed in the NYT. In 1934 Ottilie fled Germany and lived in Brussels. She was rounded up in 1942 and deported. Died in Auschwitz, probably in 1943.

Born 14 July 1904, in Vilna, Lithuania, Nadia Reisenberg moved with her family to St. Petersburg in 1915 where she studied piano at the Conservatory under Leonid Nikolaiev. After the Russian revolution, the family moved, going from Vilna, where Nadia played in the Gelios Theatre accompanying movies, to Poland where she concertized with the Warsaw Philharmonic, to Germany. The Reisenberg s came to America in 1922. Under the helpful largesse of Isaac Sherman, Nadia gave private recitals and began to build a reputation.

With less than one year of study with Alexander Lambert in New York, she gave her American debut on 17 December 1922, playing the Polish Fantasy by Ignace Paderewski, with the composer at the performance in the Century Theatre. With sterling reviews by the press, the young Miss Reisenberg began to receive invitations for more recitals.…
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German-American. Soprano. First known woman cantor, in San Francisco, during the years between 1884-1893, the only currently known example of a nineteenth century woman cantor in America. Born on March 7, 1847 in Stuttgart the daughter of Moritz Eichberg (1806-1892), a cantor of Stuttgart for many years, and Eleanor Seligsberg Eichberg (1811-1881). Julie studied music at the Stuttgart Conservatorium. At age 17, Julie came to America, joining her sister, Mrs. Pauline Weiller, a piano teacher, in Baltimore in 1864. In 1866, she married Jacob H. Rosewald, a violinist and conductor. She and her husband participated widely in Jewish community musical activities in Baltimore. She decided to further her musical studies in Europe in 1870. She began singing opera professionally in America in 1875 with the Kellogg English Opera Company.…
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NOTE: Giora Schuster was incorrectly identified in the International Encyclopedia of Women Composers, by Aaron I. Cohen, (New York: RR Bowker Co: 1981) p. 416, as female. Actually, Schuster is a male Israeli, born in Germany in 1915, He had an outpouring of music published in the 1960s, mostly chamber music. The JMWC is indepted to Dr. Yosef Goldenberg of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance for pointing out the error in the encyclopedia for us.