SHAAREI TIKVAH’S
Inaugural Concert in our New Building
Monday, May 11th, 2009 - 7:30 p.m
46 Fox Meadow Road, Scarsdale, NY
A Celebration in Song
Featuring Cantors Natasha Hirschhorn & Benjie Ellen Schiller
and our own Cantor Gerald Cohen
For information on tickets, please contact the Shaarei Tikvah office
(914) 472-2013 ext. 300, office@shaareitikvah.org
A CELEBRATION IN SONG:
Three Cantor/Composers in Concert!
Cantors Natasha Hirschhorn, Benjie Ellen Schiller, and our own Cantor Gerald Cohen, multi-talented as singers, composers and pianists, will perform a very special concert Monday May 11, at 7:30 p.m.—the inaugural concert in our new building!
Cantors Cohen, Hirschhorn, Schiller, each one of them leading composers and performers of Jewish music, are thrilled to be performing together as a trio for the first time. The concert, “A Celebration in Song,” will feature many of their own compositions, such as Cantor Schiller’s lively and popular setting of Psalm 150, Cantor Hirschhorn’s beautiful, soulful Shalom Rav, and selections from Cantor Cohen’s opera, “Sarah and Hagar.” They will also include other Jewish, Broadway, and classical favorites, including a tribute to Felix Mendelssohn on the 200th anniversary of his birth.
Cantor Benjie Ellen Schiller is both the first woman to be a full time faculty member at the School of Sacred Music at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and a composer of sacred music; her music has received many commissions, and is published by Transcontinental Music Publications. Cantor Schiller performs and teaches widely, including serving as co-director of the philanthropic choral group, "Beged Kefet," and lectures on Jewish music including topics on spirituality, music as a path to healing, and the role of music in the Jewish life cycle. Cantor Schiller serves as the cantor at Bet Am Shalom Synagogue of White Plains.
A native of Ukraine, Cantor Natasha J. Hirschhorn is an accomplished performer and recording artist, featured on numerous CDs as singer, pianist, arranger and composer. She is on the faculty of the Cantorial School of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and of the Academy for Jewish Religion. She serves as Music Director of Congregation Ansche Chesed in Manhattan, and conductor of two Jewish community choirs. Cantor Hirschhorn is a vice-president of Shalshelet: foundation for new Jewish liturgical music, which seeks to foster new music for Jewish congregational use and expose wider audiences to innovations in Jewish religious music.
Cantor Gerald Cohen has earned distinction as a composer of both concert and liturgical music, and as a cantor and performer. Cohen’s compositions are published by Oxford University Press and Transcontinental Music Publications. He recently completed his first opera, Sarah and Hagar, based on the story from the book of Genesis, with a libretto by Charles Kondek. Honors in composition include the 2008 Borromeo String Quartet Award of the Aaron Copland House, a 2007 Aaron Copland Award, the Westchester Prize for New Work, and commissioning grants from Meet the Composer/National Endowment for the Arts. He is Cantor at Shaarei Tikvah Congregation in Scarsdale, N.Y. and is on the faculty of the H.L. Miller Cantorial School of The Jewish Theological Seminary.