Sh'ma Israel

Barzilai, Shmuel

99185

The second CD that Shmuel Barzilai has recorded for Gramola shines like the first “Areshet Sefateinu” with great, sophisticated orchestral and choral arrangements by Dr. Mordechai Sobol. The selected compositions and their interpretation by Shmuel Barzilai, with Yedidya-Tzviel Weksler as a soloist and duo partner, with the S.F. Y. Philharmonic Orchestra and choir under the well-proven direction of Dr. Mordechai Sobol is certainly to be understood as a tribute to the fantastic Jan Peerce and the great cantors of their time Sirota, Kwartin and Rosenblatt, as well as a bridge between Jewish tradition and Israeli culture, as the combination of Hasidic and Cantoral music. Shmuel Barzilai is Chief Cantor of the Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde (Jewish Community) in Vienna.He was born into a wellknown cantor family in Jerusalem. He studied in Yeshivot (Torah institutions) in Israel. He received his basic education as a cantor from the Viennese cantor Zalman Polak and cantor Moshe Stern. He graduated from the Institute of Music and Cantoral Singing in Tel Aviv. Shmuel Barzilai has been Chief Cantor of the Vienna Jewish Community since 1992. He received Magister degrees in philosophy and Jewish studies from the University of Vienna. Shmuel Barzilai has performed with famous philharmonic andsymphony orchestras in Europe, Israel and the USA. Every year he embarks on a tour of Europe, accompanying the Jerusalem Great Synagogue Choir. He sang the prayer for the dead“El Maleh Rachamim” at the legendary memorial concert Mauthausen 2000, accompanied by the Vienna Philharmonic. On January 27, 2014, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, he performed at the UN in New York. The keynote speaker for this event was Steven Spielberg.

CD x 1

Gramola

04.02.19

9003643991859