Charles Heller with Joshua Markovitz
Who Killed Hazzanut?
How did hazzanut, a once-beloved sacred art form, practically vanish within a generation? How can we bring it back?
Download the conversation outline and links here
Joshua Markovitz is a graduate of Orthodox yeshivas, UCLA School of Law, the Israel Defense Forces, and the Tel Aviv Cantorial Institute under Cantor Naftali Herstik. He also attended the Yiddish Summer Program in Vilnius, Lithuania and published in the Yiddish Forward while serving in the IDF. He has most recently been privileged to study Hazzanut with master Cantor Noah Schall in New York. Since starting his Hazzanut studies, Joshua has been trying to learn everything he can on the subject, which led him to Charles Heller’s “What to Listen For in Jewish Music”.
Charles Heller graduated from Cambridge University, furthered his studies at Wilfrid Laurier and York Universities, received a B.Ed. in Music Education from the University of Toronto, and studied composition with Marjan Mozetich. He has been involved for over fifty years in synagogue music, beginning as a boy soprano aged eight. His work with Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda Synagogue, Toronto, was recognized by the United Synagogue of America’s Solomon Schechter Award for Music in 1982. He performed with such major figures as Marvin Hamlisch, Cantor David Kusevitsky and Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. His arrangements and original compositions are used in synagogues and in concerts throughout the world. He was Vice-President of Jewish Music Toronto and since 1986 has been on the editorial board of the Cantors Assembly, New York. His interest in the transmission and evolution of Jewish music is the basis of his award-winning book What To Listen For in Jewish Music . In 2015 he was appointed Composer in Residence for Strings Attached Orchestra and in 2021 was appointed Composer in Residence at the historic Kiever Shul in downtown Toronto.”