Deveykus
Judit Frigyesi in discussion with Alex Klein
Judit Frigyesi Niran is a teacher, musicologist, ethnomusicologist, writer, scholar, and the author of several dozen articles. Her musicological interest comprises the 19th-21st centuries (Mendelssohn, Kurtág, Feldman, Ligeti, etc.) with focus on Béla Bartók (Béla Bartók and turn-of-the-century Budapest, California, 1998, 2000). She was the only scholar who systematically collected, transcribed and analyzed the sounds of the Jewish ritual in Communist Eastern Europe after the Holocaust — with especial focus on the prayer of the simple people and untrained ba’ale tefillah (Writing on Water: The Sounds of Jewish Prayer, CEU Press, 2018). She is also a poet and photographer, creator of installations, short films and multi-media projects.
Alex Klein was born in London. He has been passionate about Jewish music, especially chazzanut all his life. As a youth he took services in Finchley Synagogue and studied at Jews College. He settled in Manchester where he brought significant Jewish artists and cantors for concerts to the UK. He worked with Geraldine Auerbach, Director of the Jewish Music Institute, as head of its Synagogue Music Section. Together they created the European Cantors Association in 2012 which runs Cantors Conventions in European and British cities and other programmes.