HIN'NI: Tradition in the American Synagogue

Eastern European Cantorial Gems from the YIVO Archives Available on a New 2-CD set

Made possible by the Anne E. Leibowitz fund.

The just-released 2-CD set on the NAXOS label, HIN'NI: Tradition in the American Synagogue — the first cooperative project between the Milken Archive for Jewish Music and YIVO — is a unique contribution to the preservation and awareness of the sacred music legacy of Eastern European Jewry.

For well more than a century, there have been many thousands of virtuoso cantorial recordings of individual prayer settings. This new CD-set marks the first-time selections of the vast repertoire of Eastern European tradition are presented in their natural, intended context of a complete and uninterrupted Rosh Hashana Musaf service — in this case as transplanted in North America by immigrant cantors and composers and their succeeding generation.

The fruits of a 25-year-long project conceived, researched, annotated, and directed by Neil W. Levin, YIVO's Anne E. Leibowitz Professor in Music, this recording features world-renowned Hazzan Alberto Mizrahi with a 45-voice a cappella choir — directed by Levin — in every component of the service, from historically informed, authentic cantorial improvisations, recitatives, and recitations to elaborate choral settings and familiar congregational melodies. Nearly all of the mostly unpublished music featured was found in manuscripts through painstaking research in YIVO's archival holdings. Composers represent traditions born throughout the pre-WWII Yiddish-speaking world: Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Romania, Hungary, and Austro-Galicia.

Recorded to the highest standards of current technology as well as liturgical and musical authenticity, this recording will evoke instant nostalgia for some, while for others, it will be a revelation of a once-thriving but fast disappearing precious legacy of Jewish experience. The 2-CD set also includes a 71-page booklet with detailed discussions of the music and new translations of all the sung texts.