CANTOR REBECCA GARFEIN
Senior Cantor
Cantor Rebecca
Garfein, mezzo-soprano, is the Senior Cantor
of Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City, and is the first
female
Cantor ever to hold this position. Cantor Garfein has
appeared in
numerous recitals throughout the United States,
Israel, and Europe.
In 1997, Cantor Garfein was invited to participate in the Jewish
Cultural Festival in Berlin, Germany and was the first female
Cantor to
give a solo concert in the same city her grandfather of
blessed memory
fled. At the 1998 Berlin Jewish Cultural Festival, she became the
first
female Cantor to preside in a German synagogue, and released a CD of the
live
recording of the 1997 Berlin concert, “Sacred Chants of the
Contemporary
Synagogue.”
On November 10, 2005 at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York,
Cantor
Garfein presented the concert and historic CD debut of “Golden
Chants in America...
Commemorating 350 years of Jewish Music, 1654-2004,”
Including music from the
Spanish-Portuguese Jews, the synagogue and the
Yiddish and Broadway theater,
the CD is the first U.S. recording to
feature Jewish music spanning 350 years of life
in America.
Cantor Garfein is also a featured soloist on two recordings from the
Sacred Music
Press, Celebrating the Past and Present, honoring
the 50th anniversary of the
School of Sacred Music, 1999, and
Kol Sasson Kol Simcha, a commemoration of
the 125th
anniversary of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion,
2001.
A native of Tallahassee, Florida, Cantor Garfein has been a featured
soloist with the
Ra’a’na’na Orchestra and the Zamir Chorale at the
Jerusalem Theater in Israel and in
2001 was a soloist at the 350th
anniversary concert of the Curacao Jewish
Community.
Cantor Garfein made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2005 with Mandy Patinkin
in a
benefit concert for the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater. In 2003,
Cantor Garfein made
her debut at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in
a concert celebrating the release of
Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s book, “Musically
Speaking.” She has been a participant in
the opera program at DiCapo
Opera in New York City and at the Aspen Music
Festival. As a teenager,
Cantor Garfein was a participant in the Young Artists’ vocal
program at
the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts.
Cantor Garfein graduated cum laude from Rice University’s
Shepherd School of
Music with a degree in vocal performance and opera.
In 1993, she received her
Master’s Degree in Sacred Music and Cantorial
Investiture from the Hebrew Union
College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR).
