Monday, November 10, 7:00 pm, Goethe Institute, 170 Beacon St., Boston:  

Members of the Zamir Chamber Chorus will be on hand at this special soiree to perform selections from our upcoming concerts at the Lewandowski Festival in Berlin, Germany. To purchase tickets, click here.

Sunday, November 23, 4:00 pm, Temple Israel of Sharon, 125 Pond St., Sharon, Mass.:

A long-awaited visit to our "southern" neighbors includes a full-spectrum concert featuring music from Zamir's wide-ranging repertoire of classical, liturgical, jazz, Israeli, contemporary, and folk tunes. Selections from our upcoming Berlin concerts are also on the docket. For tickets, contact Temple Israel, 781-784-3986, or click here. 

Sunday, December 14, 4:00 pm, Central Reform Temple at Emmanuel Church, 15 Newbury St., Boston:

Don't miss this free pre-holiday concert, "A Light Through the Ages," a Hanukkah celebration, featuring selections from Zamir's popular Lights album, reflections from Rabbi Howard A. Berman, and a candlelighting ceremony. For more information, click here, or email [email protected].

Thursday, December 18-Sunday, December 21, Lewandowski Festival, Berlin, Germany:

We are thrilled to perform once again at the Louis Lewandowski Festival in Berlin. The theme of this year's festival is "Star and Stripes," showcasing the synagogue music of German composers who immigrated to the United States during the twentieth century, including Hugo Chaim Adler, Herbert Fromm, Max Janowski, Arnold Schoenberg, Kurt Weill, and Stephan Wolpe. The festival is again presented under the auspices of Klaus Wowereit, Governing Mayor of Berlin. For more information, click here. 

Wednesday, December 24, 7:30 pm, Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward St., Newton, Mass: 

Fresh from our Berlin trip, we come home to perform Hanukkah Happens XXV, this year celebrating "Seasons of Our Joy," a concert of festive music for the Jewish holidays around the year, featuring Cantor Elias Rosemberg. Also on the program is the world premiere of "Yah Ribon Alam," commissioned from the exciting young composer Jeremiah Klarman. Tickets will be available through Temple Emanuel later in the fall.

Cantor Elias Rosemberg

Saturday, March 7, 2015, 

8:00 pm, Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough St, Boston: 

Zamir will join the Metropolitan Chorale for a performance of Handel's magnificent oratorio Israel in Egypt.

The Kings Theatre, London, in the Haymarket, where Israel in Egypt was first performed

Thursday, June 4, Time TBA, Temple Emanuel, Newton, Mass:

Mark your calendars for our season finale, this year honoring Cantor Elias Rosemberg, and featuring Jewish music from Latin America with guest artists, Amir Milstein's Tucan Trio.

If I had to distill our mission into two words, it's "creating harmony." Of course, that doesn't capture all the details. At the core is our repertoire--choral interpretations of the music and texts of the Jewish people. And the spokes emanating from that core also define our mission. We reach out not only to Jewish audiences (through our "synagigs"), but crucially to the general public.

Our repertoire is available to all conductors through sheet music, CDs, iTunes, and YouTube.

In 1987, we began a series of joint concerts with the New Temple Singers, an African-American Baptist choir. In 2001, we performed our first "Sacred Bridges" concert at Our Lady Help of Christians church in Newtonville; it was a standing-room-only event. In 2011, we performed the first of our "Middle East Harmonies" programs at 

Members of Bustan Abraham

Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, bringing together Jewish and Arab music and musicians. We've collaborated with the Metropolitan Chorale of Brookline, the Newton Choral Society, Chorus pro Musica, and Nick Page's wonderful, multicultural Mystic Chorale. Zamir and I have performed and conducted workshops for conventions of the American Choral Directors Association. 

In 1999, we brought our mission to Europe with concerts in Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland, the home of the first secular Jewish choirs. The film from that tour, Zamir: Jewish Voices Return to Poland, has been shown on public television stations throughout the country for the past 14 years. In 2002, we brought Jewish sacred choral music back to Italy, where it all began 400 years ago. And in 2011, we represented the United States at the first choral festival in Berlin, paying tribute to that city's venerable traditions of synagogue music.

This season, we will perform at synagogues in Sharon and Newton. We will collaborate with the Metropolitan Chorale in a performance at Jordan Hall of G. F. Handel's magnificent retelling of Israel's exodus from Egypt. We will collaborate with the Tucan Trio in presenting Jewish music from Latin America. We will demonstrate Jewish music to choral directors from all across America at the national convention of Chorus America. And we will once again represent the United States at the Lewandowski Festival of Jewish Music in Berlin, Germany. 

In a time of increasing anti-Semitism and other forms of xenophobia, we must do everything we can to bring people together. In a world of dissonance, we must create whatever harmony we can. In the words of my distinguished colleagues:

Leonard Bernstein

"This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before." --Leonard Bernstein, composer and conductor 

"In spite of nature's ills and man's inhumanities, there are baser and nobler options of action. And it is a part of being human to choose the nobler. War may continue to exist. We will continue to sing." --Robert Shaw, conductor

"It is very important that people like you help us to remind the world that struggling with Arabs is not the only thing we are doing in this country." --Tzvi Avni, composer, winner of the Israel Prize

Best wishes and blessings for a harmonious New Year!

Tenor Andrew Mattfeld has been chosen as the Conducting Intern for the 2014-15 season. Originally from suburban New York City, Andrew's early training consisted of voice and piano study with Morris Borenstein and Eileen Mackintosh. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in Vocal Performance from Ithaca College School of Music. Andrew was a piano soloist and collaborator with the Adriatic Chamber Music Festival in Bonefro, Italy, in 2006 and 2007, and tenor soloist with the Frost School of Music at Salzburg College for the 2012 Salzburg Festival.

Andrew has presented lectures,

Andrew Mattfeld

recitals, and concerts in Ithaca and around the U.S. and Europe. His graduate thesis on the development of Cabaret culture as a form of political resistance in Nazi Germany was the basis for a Fulbright proposal to examine the current state of the art form in Berlin. He lives in Boston, where he has a large private studio of both young singers and pianists and serves as Director of Music Ministries and Organist at First United Methodist in Melrose. "I'm very excited to be working with the Zamir Chorale to broaden my knowledge of the Jewish choral tradition," Andrew wrote in an email, "as well as offering my experience and unique area of knowledge as the group prepares for the Berlin concert tour."

The Zamir Chorale's conducting internships have been in existence for 15 years, originally funded through a generous grant from the family of Mary Wolfman Epstein. Distinguished alumni include Dr. Allan Friedman (2002-04), former chapel conductor at Duke University, who currently leads the Women's Voices Chorus and other groups in North Carolina; Elijah Botkin (20013-14), a Northeastern University student and choral conductor at Prozdor High School; Cantor Hinda Eisen Labovitz (2008-09), now Cantor/Educator at Ohr Kodesh in Chevy Chase, Maryland; and Cantor Rick Lawrence (2011-12), now Cantor at Temple Emanu El in Orange Village, Ohio. 

After the show, about 50 members

Johanna Ehrmann, Deborah Melkin, Jill and Larry Sandberg

and alumni representing all five (!) decades of Zamir's history gathered for partying and singing some of the old (and new) repertoire. It was wonderful to see so many friends from near and far. "There's always a bit of magic when Zamir singers, past and present, get together," said Josh. "It's like a family reunion, but without the tensions. We're a beautiful musical family!"

Leila Joy Rosenthal, Phyllis Wilner, Marilyn Jaye

Cantor Riki Lippitz and Carol Marton

Rachel Seliber, Ruthie Birnbaum Pernick, Herbie Birnbaum

Josh and Ronda Garber Jacobson