American. Born January 1, 1936 in New York City. Conductor, pianist. First woman appointed conductor to a metropolitan orchestra and first woman to conduct at Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall. Also the first woman to conduct on a commercially recorded opera. (Massenet’s Le Cid, 1976) Ms. Rabin grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home. A child prodigy, she received a scholarship by age 5. She attended New York City High School of Music and Art. Later she studied at CCNY and conducting at Mannes College of Music. She also studied at the Hebrew Union College School of Sacred Music. Started vocal coaching and rehearsal accompanist at New York City Opera in 1957-(8). Then, in graduate school, studied conducting with Carl Bamberger and later with Joseph Rosenstock at the Metropolitan Opera.…
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American-born Israeli. Born Manhattan, April 22, 1965. Lived in the Bronx until age seven. Moved with her family to Monroe, N.Y. where there were very few Jews. She learned her first Sabbath songs at Cejwin Camps in Port Jervis, NY. Minny Genny was her first piano teacher and she studied technique and memory with her. In High School she added voice to her violin studies. She continued to study voice at the University of Rochester majoring in English, and graduating 1986. In Dec, 1991 she made Aliyah to Israel study Hebrew and working with women singing in Katamon and serving as a translator. She met Margalit Jakob and started singing with her, getting involved in the local folk community. She sang backup vocals on a CD by Ofar Golany in 2000 in memory of his father, and subsequently appeared on some tracks of Hanna Yaffe’s Lullabies from Jerusalem.…
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“Cantor Wolff, a native of The Netherlands, holds a degree in flute from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and performed and recorded throughout Europe as a member of various chamber ensembles. In 1991 she received her Masters degree in Sacred Music from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, School of Sacred Music and was the first woman from the European continent to be invested as a cantor… She currently serves as Director of Student Placement and a part time faculty member at the School of Sacred Music, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. She was Director of the Department of Synagogue Music of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and served as cantor at Temple Shalom in Succasunna, NJ, Temple Beth Chaverim in Mahwah, NJ, Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City, the Liberal Jewish Congregation in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and the Hebrew Congregation of St.…
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American-born Israeli. Tziona Achishena provided this autobiographical sketch: “Tziona’s Achishena’s rich and soulful voice weaves its way through her new disc, “Miriam’s Drum”, created in collaboration with percussionist Shani Ben Canar. The album features original melodies to ancient Hebrew prayers “received” through her intuitive musicianship, and enlivened by world class percussion, transcendent harmonies, and inspired vocal improvisation. The album’s release marks the culmination of years of musical and spiritual searching. Interestingly, this process began, not through music training, but through dance. From early childhood to her first years in college at Berkeley, Tziona spent much of her time in the dance studio, studying all the major western dance forms from Ballet to Modern dance. At home, however, she was singing; and experiencing through her voice the beginnings of a sense of the revelation of soul.…
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Born in Chicago, IL, September 28, 1913. She showed musical promise by age five, and received a scholarship to study at Chicago Musical College 1919-1922. In 1924 began studying piano with Djane Lavoie-Herz. In 1925, she attended the American Conservatory in Chicago. She studied composition with Ruth Crawford and counterpoint with Adolf Weidig. In 1931 she studied with Roger Sessions in New York. She composed dissonant “ultra-modern” music. She taught at Julliard School of Music, and NYU. From 1964 until her retirement in 1987, Fine taught at Bennington College in Vermont. She founded the American Composers Alliance. She received numerous grants and awards including National Endowment for the Arts in 1974. Judith Cody completed a bio-bibliography (Greenwood Press) of her works which included 140 compositions. She died at age 86 in March, 20, 2000.…
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Born in New York City. A graduate of Barnard College, with B.A.,(Psychology), she also has a Master¹s Degree in Voice from The Juilliard School. She studied Voice: opera ( Martin Lies, Rose Bampton, Daniel Ferro) and Jazz Improvisation (voice-Janet Lawson, piano-Haim Cotton). She also studied Classical Piano (Jeaneane Dowis, Aspen Festival) and Composition (McNeil Robinson). As composer/arranger and editor at Transcontinental Music company in New York, she has written and arranged numerous pieces of solo and choral Jewish liturgical music. She produced, arranged, and music directed the 2-CD set Kol Dodi: Jewish Music for Weddings (2002). Also for the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, she arranged and produced the recording Songs from a Passover Haggadah (1997). She is co-founder, vocalist, and keyboard artist of the West End Klezmorim, and wrote music and lyrics for the off-Broadway revue Hot Klezmer; she has been assistant music director and vocal coach for the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre.…
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American. Born Brooklyn, NY. Opera Composer, conductor and professor of Comosition and Theory. Received PhD, University of Chicago. Currently director of New York City Opera ‘showcasing American Composers.’ Operas include Festival of Regrets, Lilith and A Captive Spirit. Other works include Eishes Chalyil and Letters Home.

American. Educator, editor, poet. Born, September, 1890, Portland, Oregon. Died, 1991. Her parents were J.F. and Amelia (Marks) Reinhart. Attended HUC, 1909-1910. BA, University of Cincinnati, 1912. Irma Cohon wrote the first English language history of Jewish music (A.Z. Idelssohn’s book was 1929):Introduction to Jewish Music in eight illustrated lectures (publ. before 1923), published by the National Council on Jewish Women (the 1923 edition by Bloch is a second edition). She collaborated with HUC prof, A.Z. Idelsohn, on Harvest Festivals, A Children’s Succoth Celebration. Cohon wrote poetry and several other works including A Brief Jewish Ritual (Women of Mizpah, 1921). On June 12, 1912, A. Irma Cohon married Rabbi Samuel S. Cohon (see Manuscript Collection No.276). They had one son, Baruch Joseph. Cohon’s brother was Harold Reinhart, ‘a prominent liberal rabbi in London, England.’ Her papers and music manuscripts are housed at the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati.…
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American. Born January 22, 1898. St. Louis, Missouri. Founded the El Dorado Conservatory of Fine Arts in El Dorado, Arkansas. Papers held in the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati.

American. Cantorial singer, educator and children’s camp specialist. Currently Judaic Program Coordinator and songleader, Capital Camps, Camp Benjamin, 3rd-6th grades, Waynesboro, PA. Dr. Foster holds a PhD in American Studies, George Washington University(1993); MA Philosophy, George Washington University; MA Anthropology/Archaeology, SUNY Buffalo; and BA English, SUNYC Oswego. Dr. Foster is a performer, Jewish Folk Arts Festival, Rockville, MD; Music Specialist, pre-schools, 4th-7th grades, retreats, 6th-10th grades; Student Cantor, adult, Children’s and Tot, services HHD; Student Cantor Bar Mitzvah and Memorial Services, Bat Mitzvah training, Shabbat services; Sunday School Coordinator and teacher; Music Specialist summer camps in area; Jewish meditation group coordinator, facilitator. She is a member of the Women Cantors’ Network. She has also been a part-time Professor Montgomery College, Germantown, Maryland, in History. She resides in Germantown, MD.…
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Jewish song leader. American. Works in Chicago’s western suburbs, providing the music for Shabbat services, Family services, Tot Shabbat, Holiday services and programs, camps and retreats. Cindy is a graduate of the 1995 Synagogue Leadership Institute and the 1995 Rabbinic Aid program, both sponsored by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. She is a 10 year veteran of Hava Nashira, the annual Song Leading and Music Conference held at Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.
http://home.xnet.com/~rtm/

American. Born on June 25, 1961. Rabbi. Singer. Composer. Graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 1983, and from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1997. Rabbi Margot Stein sings and composes with the musical groups MIRAJ and Shabbat Unplugged. Her first solo album, “Create out of Nothing”, was produced in 1991. She wrote music and lyrics for an award- winning musical play, Guarding the Garden, with book by David Schechter. Seen by over 20,000 people, this musical toured North American synagogues for 4 seasons. Margot produced a recording of the music from Guarding the Garden in 1993. With MIRAJ, she has produced two albums of original Jewish music, “A Moon Note/Emunot” and “Counting Angels in the Wilderness.” With Shabbat Unplugged, she served as producer for the recording of a CD to accompany “A Night of Questions: A Passover Haggadah” (Reconstructionist Press, 2000).…
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American. composer, clarinet, viola, piano. b. New York, NY, B.A., Barnard College; M.A., Harvard; D.M.A., Columbia, in music composition. Her teachers have included Otto Luening, William Sydeman, Leon Kirchner, Lukas Foss, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and Jack Beeson. Her compositions are published by Seesaw Music Corp. and recorded on New World Records and Crystal Records. She has received awards from UNESCO, the National League of American Pen Women, ASCAP, and the Rockefeller Foundation, and (paid) commissions from Philip A. DeSimone, Thomas Matta, the IWBC for Junction, the Monarch Brass Quintet, the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse, the Fromm Foundation, NEA, Great Lakes Performing Artist Associates, Con Spirito, the Greater Lansing Symphony, and the Chamber Music Society of Baltimore. She has taught at Columbia, various branches of City University, Goucher College, the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, and the Aspen Music Festival, and is currently on the faculty of the Mannes College of Music and Eugene Lang College.…
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American. Born March 1, 1917 as Frances Rose Shore. Died February 24, 1994, Beverly Hills, California. Blues and popular music singer, and star on television. Grew up in Winchester, Tennessee as the only Jewish child. Attended Vanderbilt University, graduating 1938. Went into radio in New York and became known as “Dinah”, from her audition song. In 1939, started The Dinah Shore Show series on radio. She sang mostly the blues and imitated the African-American singers of the day. During WWII, she married George Montgomery and started in movies, but her main career became television with the hugely popular The Dinah Shore Chevy Show (1951-1956) and The Dinah Shore Show (1956-1962) followed by a talk-show called Dinah’s Place (1970-1974) and other TV series during the next twenty years.

“Shirona, a native New Yorker, was raised in Israel in a musical, cultured evironment, and started performing at an early age. After serving in the Israeli army she returned to the United States and starred in the nationally acclaimed Israeli-American Musical Review “On Silver Wings”. After taking time off to marry and raise a family, Shirona returned to the Jewish Music scene with a newfound interest in New Age and Jewish Spirituality. She began composing original melodies to the ancient texts of the Bible and Prayer Book, in Hebrew, using multi-cultural musical influences, such as Celtic, Eastern European, Middle Eastern and American.” She currently resides with her family in Rye, NY. He CD Judaic Love Songsreceived wide ranging acclaim and received reviews in The Journal of Synagogue Music – Fall 2001 and Jewish Week, August 10, 2001.…
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American. Born April 9, 1924, Cavala, Greece. First female synagogue cantor. At age 4, she moved to Poland with her family. As a youngster there, she convinced the local cantor to teach her to sing for synagogue, (which he agreed to do if she cut her braids!) In 1938, the family escaped from Poland to Australia. There, she met and married an American service man and moved to US, settling in Oceanside, New York. In 1955, she was appointed cantor at Temple Avodah for their High Holidays. The New York Times ran an article on August 3, 1955, quoting Reform officials that she may have been “the very first woman cantor in …Jewish history.” She continued to teach children and serve as a cantor in various synagogues in places she lived, and on Jewish holiday cruises.…
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American Singer and Blogger. Raised in upstate NY, attended Hampshire College and immigrated to Israel. Orthodox and Green, Sarah joined Atid Yarok (green future) at Merkaz Hamagshimim Haddassah. Sarah went on to finish a Master s degree in Non-Profit Management at Hebrew University. After finishing her degree she took a position with the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. In 2003, Sarah married David Nadav and they lived together on The Moshav and then moved to Jerusalem where their son Shalom BenTzion was born. They currently live in LA. Her music mixes influences of Carlebach, hasidic, American folk, rock, and middle easterns sounds from Jerusalem and is put together on her first CD, “Sarah Dahlia” Music For the Middle of the Night. A lot of songs in English.…
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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.”

American. Singer, musician, actor and writer. Sings Yiddish, folk, jazz, American standards. Also worked as teacher, playwright and screenwriter.

American. Vocalist. Pianist. Began as a teenager in the Catskills. Studied with Yiddish singer Martha Schlamme. Attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Also co-authored a book, “My Father’s Story: A Child’s Introduction to the Holocaust.” Michele started out as a lawyer and practiced as an Assistant DA in NYC and Cambridge. Later she returned to her love of music, founding The Klezmer Connection, a simcha band, in 1996.

American. Born July 16, 1863 in Bielitz, Silesia. Died, August 20, 1927. Moved to US in 1867. Concert pianist, teacher. Studied piano in US and then in Vienna with Leschetizky between 1879-1883. Professionally debuted at Chicago Beethoven Society in 1884. Concertized throughout the United States, in recital and with orchestras, promoting the works of contemporary American and European composers in addition to a vast standard repertoire.

American. Composer. b. Brooklyn, New York, April 6, 1968. Pianist since the age of five. “Studied composition with Ruth Schonthal at the Westchester Conservatory of Music, where she received the William Petchek Scholarship. For two summers she was a scholarship student at the Tanglewood Institute. She was graduated summa cum laude from the music department of Harvard University, where her teachers included Earl Kim, Leon Kirchner and Peter Lieberson. Lann won the New York Music Teachers Association ‘Herbert Zipper Prize,’ the New York Musicians Club ‘Bohemians Prize’ and the Harvard University ‘Hugh F. MacColl Prize.’ She directed the Harvard Group For New Music and was co-founder of the Harvard Group For Gender Studies In Music. She also produced and announced radio feature programs (WHRB, Cambridge) and worked as music director for productions at the American Repertory Theater.…
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Professor of Judaic Studies and Performance Studies at New York University, Dr. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett researches performance practice and has published on klezmer music and other topics of Jewish culture, as well as general American culture, aesthetics of everyday life, cookery and performance, “ethnography, world’s fairs, museum, theater and tourist productions.” From 1988 to 1992, she was President of the American Folklore Society. In 2001, she was at University of Pennsylvania as a fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies. She wrote such books as: Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage(1998) and Image Before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864-1939 (1977) with Lucjan Dobroszycki.

American. Conductor. Singing coach. Pianist. Teacher. BM from Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University. MA in Choral conducting from DePaul University. Studied at Anshe Emet synagogue with Hazzan Moses J. Silverman. 1962-1997, served as Director of Music at Temple Beth Israel. 1984 to present, Artistic Director/Administrator of halevi Choral Society, the only proefessional ensemble in US devoted exclusively to Jewish choral repertoire. Founding member of the Guild of Temple Musicians, serving as President. Founder of the Guild Newsletter and editor for 11 years. Wrote monthly column for American organist Magazine. Selected jewish Chicagoan of the Year, 1996. Fellowship, Illinois Arts Council, 1999. Taught Jewish music for board of Jewish Education Music Institute; lectured at DePaul and Northwestern University; presented numerous lectures, workshops and seminars. Presented special concerts honoring major Jewish and Israeli musicians.…
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American. Cantorial soloist. Songwriter. Robin has performed and recorded her original music as one half of the duo B’shert and now solo, with the release of her recording “Ta’amod–Stand Up!” Winner of the American Zionist Movement’s First Annual Song Competition in 1994, Robin’s unique style of storytelling through song, MidraShir, has been acclaimed nationwide. Robin’s liturgical compositions have been sung in synagogues across the United States and her Adonai Mah Adam was recently published through Transcontinental Music Publications. Ordained at the Academy for Jewish Religion, Robin is the cantor at Temple Beth Shalom in Hastings-in-Hudson, NY.
www.robinannejoseph.com