History of Jewish Music

A monthly look at a different composer and their output. Covering some of the prominent composers whose music has become lesser known these days.

Instructor: Cantor David Reinwald Cost: $10 per session or $70 for the whole series
7:00 – 9:00 pm | TBS Board Room

The final class of Cantor Reinwald’s History of Jewish Music series on Tuesday, April 9th at 7 pm will focus on a survey of music from the Holocaust, with particular attention to cabaret music written and performed in the ghettos and camps. This is an area of great passion for Cantor Reinwald that he has been studying and researching for nearly 20 years. We hope you can join us.

Composer Bonia Shur (1923 – 2012) was a major force in the Reform Jewish Movement in North America. More than 250 of his published compositions have been in use at synagogues throughout the country and abroad.
In addition to creating a vast liturgical repertoire, Mr. Shur wrote for film, television and the theater. Some of these works included the vocal score to the motion picture The Russians Are Coming, music for the television special Revolt in Mode’in and a dramatic work called Six Hours Before the Execution in memory of the murdered Jewish Soviet poets, which makes use of a cantor, two narrators, dancers, a choir and full symphonic orchestra.
Mr. Shur’s music is vibrant, dynamic and highly individual — perhaps as a result of his diverse background. Born in Latvia, Mr. Shur escaped the Nazi invasion, fought in the Russian army, immigrated to Israel and lived on a kibbutz before coming to the United States in 1960.

Max Janowski (1912–1991), was a composer of Jewish liturgical music, a conductor, choir director, and voice teacher. Born in Berlin, in the early 1930s he became head of the piano department at the Musashino Academy of Music, Tokyo, Japan. He emigrated to the United States in 1937 and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

Janowski was the longtime music director at KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation in Hyde Park in Chicago. His choral works include the traditional Jewish prayers “Avinu Malkeinu,” “Yismehu” and “ve-Shomeru”.

Max died in April, 1991 at his home in Hyde Park, Ill, of heart failure. He was 79 years old.