Moscow Male Jewish Cappella Choir

By Arlene Stolnitz

Many of us with an Ashkenazi heritage can trace our roots back to ancestors who came from the area known as the Pale of Settlement, which stretched to the most western borders of Imperial Russia. Known in those days as the Russian Empire, it became part of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1917.

Perhaps it is because my maternal grandmother came from Odessa (which was part of the Pale), that the music of the Moscow Male Jewish Cappella Choir spoke to me. A little research revealed that, even though life was deplorably hard at the time for many Jews, Odessa was known as a singularly musical place, with music, theater and opera playing a significant role in the lives of its residents.

Russian and Yiddish folklore were popular, and songs of the era dealt with varied aspects of the Jewish experience. The repertoire of Russian and Yiddish songs reveals the carefree but dangerous life of the time.

In a future article, I hope to write about the life of the underworld employing the stylistic music known as blatnaia pesnia.

In my reading, I came upon a group called the Odessa Jewish Cultural Society, which was a launching pad for the world of the arts. Renowned poet Haim Nachman Bialik came from this period as did countless actors, writers, novelists, journalists and musicians. The Jewish Song workshop, known as De Yiddish Leed, listed scores of musicians and included well-known names, like violinists David Oistrakh and Nathan Milstein.

All of this has greatly influenced the music of the Moscow Male Jewish Choir, which was established in 1989 under the Male Choir of Cantorial Art Academy with support from Mikhail Gorbachev, who was then president of the USSR.

Together with the Russian Jewish community and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (also known as JOINT or JDC, a Jewish relief organization based in New York City), the choir was renamed the Hassidic Cappella, and later became known as the Moscow Male Jewish Cappella.

The choir’s singers are professional musicians from Moscow’s leading musical institutes and conservatories. They are mainly students and teachers, who are committed to performing Jewish liturgical and cantorial music that has been largely forgotten. The music they sing today originally appeared in the early- and mid-19th century in the countries of Eastern Europe and Western Russia, but virtually disappeared after the 1917 revolution.

In addition to Jewish liturgical music, the choir’s repertoire includes folk song compositions in Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. The music’s original harmonies and beauty, along with its rich Russian sound, make it especially appealing to audiences the world over.

The choir’s founder and artistic director, Alexander Tsaliuk, has directed more than 800 concerts and has participated in countless international music festivals. The choir also has recorded five CDs and two films.

The choir consists of 18 singers, two soloists, a conductor and the music director. With only 22 members, the choir is very compact and mobile and has a reputation for learning and performing difficult works in a short time period.

YouTube has several videos of the Moscow Male Jewish Cappella. I recommend listening to “Avinu Malkeynu” for a thrilling experience!