Born in Czechoslovakia, Cantor Emil Berkovits represents the fifth generation of cantors in his family. As a child soloist he performed in concerts, operas, and the Yiddish theater, and with his father and brother in concert. Educated at McGill University Conservatory of Music, he attended and later taught at Mishkan T'fillah Academy's Cantorial School. He writes much of his own music, and influences on his work, besides his father, are Hazzanim Moshe Koussevitzky and Joshua Weider. Cantor Berkovits has held positions in Chicago, Montreal, and Omaha and now serves Temple Israel in Swampscott-Marblehead, Massachusetts. He is a member of the Cantors Assembly of America, where he received his commission in 1985, and in 1994 was designated as honorary Fellow of the Cantors Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Fred Blumenthal, a native of St. Louis, he studied composition with Karel Husa and choral music with Gregg Smith at Ithaca College in the mid-1960s. Returning to St. Louis, he attended Washington University, where he studied composition, music education and choral conducting before completing a Ph.D. in musicology, writing a dissertation on the history of music in St. Louis. He has taught in inner-city public schools, has taught piano privately, and has been active in synagogue and church choir directing, piano and harpsichord technology, radio announcing, and newspaper criticism. Fred is vice-president of the St. Louis Circle of Jewish Music and is a former vice-president of the Guild of Temple Musicians.

Carol Boyd Leon is a composer, cantorial soloist, and choir director. She holds the position of music specialist at Gesher Jewish Day School, Olam Tikvah Preschool, Beth Emeth Early Childhood Center, Keshet Child Development Center, and Beth El Hebrew Congregation Religious School, Alexandria. She serves as Tot Shabbat Leader at Beth El Hebrew Congregation and Congregation B'nai Tzedek and as cantorial soloist at Greenspring Village, Springfield. The founding and current director of the Olam Tikvah (adult) Chorale, Kol NoVa Community Youth Choir, Harmoniyah of Gesher Jewish Day School, and the Beth El Hebrew Congregation Youth Choir, she instituted NoVaShir, a multi-age choral festival based in Northern Virginia. Her publications include Songs From The Heart: Family Shabbat, Jewish Life Cycle, and Gan Shirim.

Stephen DeCesare, born in Rhode Island, has won multiple national competitions and received numerous performances and commissions by theaters around the United States. He has a variety of styles in his repertoire, ranging from liturgical, opera, and musical-theater to orchestral, instrumental, and pop. To date, Mr. DeCesare has over 600 pieces in his catalogue. He is currently published with Eldridge Publishing, Contemporary Drama Service, Laurendale Publications, CanticaNOVA Publications, and J. S. Paluch & I. E. Clark Publications. His music has been broadcast on radio stations around the United States, Canada, England, and other parts of Europe.

Steve Dropkin is now recording his fifth album of original Jewish music, entitled On That Day. He is a guest lecturer at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City and has performed in England, Israel, and the United States. Steve is the founder of the Birmingham Jewish Folk Chorale. Two of Steve’s major pieces have been published in choral settings, and a third choral selection will be released in the next few months. Recently, he served as the Music Director and Worship Coordinator at the Henry S. Jacobs Camp in Utica, Mississippi. Steve has been a finalist in the American Jewish Song Contest. His music has been featured on the in-flight listening programs for Tower Airlines.

Mary Feinsinger, a graduate of Barnard College, has a master’s degree in voice from the Juilliard School. A member of the Extension Division voice faculty of the Mannes College of Music in New York and for many years on the piano-accompanying staff at Juilliard, she has recently music directed the rock-and-roll musical Beehive for the Adirondacks’ Depot Theater. She composed the score for the feature film The Apology and starred in the Folksbiene production--in Yiddish--of The Pirates of Penzance. As co-founder, vocalist, and keyboard artist of the West End Klezmorim, she performed at Carnegie Hall, The White House, Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, and St. Peter’s Jazz Church. She has been music director or vocal coach for numerous musical productions, including the Folksbiene production of Songs of Paradise.

By combining her classical music background with her love and knowledge of Jewish music, Sylvia F. Goldstein brings a new expression of Judaism to her compositions. She has served as temple music director, community college faculty member, and is currently Piano Department Chair of the Hartford Conservatory. Born in Brooklyn, she studied at the Juilliard School of Music, Preparatory Division, Cornell University, Brandeis University and the University of California at Berkeley. She has a BA and MA in music, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Connecticut State Music Teachers Association, Women Cantors Network, and Guild of Temple Musicians.

Cantor Terry Horowit came to Maryland from St. Louis by way of a biology doctoral program at Brown University. A tutor of b'nei mitzvah at Har Shalom Congregation and Tikvat Israel for many years, she also teaches numerous classes to adults on cantillation systems as well as on aspects of Jewish practices. Terry has organized and led adult and children's services at various area synagogues and facilities. Terry taught herself to play guitar at the age of 10, and has played flute since elementary school. In 2002, she completed her studies in the cantorial certification program from the Ma'alot Seminary in Rockville, Maryland. Terry writes and performs original Jewish and folk music, and composes melodies for prayers and texts from the liturgy.

Evette Katlin has officiated as a cantorial sheliah for the past 23 years, the last 2 as a guest for High Holidays at Congregation Neve Shalom in Metuchen, New Jersey. Evette has been a member of the New Jersey Cantors Concert Ensemble since 2001. She studied hazzanut privately with Cantor William Sharlin, with Hazzanim Brian Mayer and Faith Steinsnyder, and through the Jewish Theological Seminary program in Jerusalem. For the past 21 years, Evette and her husband, Hazzan Arthur Katlin, have concertized extensively as a musical duo. Evette is also a licensed psychotherapist with an expertise in the field of addictions. Dr. Katlin earned her PhD in health studies from Temple University, an MSW from Hunter College, and an MA in clinical psychology from Antioch University.

Shirona Kaufman, a native New Yorker, was raised in Israel in a musical, cultured environment and started performing at an early age. After serving in the Israeli army, she returned to the United States and starred in the nationally acclaimed Israeli-American musical review On Silver Wings. After taking time off to marry and raise a family, Shirona returned to the Jewish music scene with a newfound interest in new age and Jewish spirituality. She began composing original melodies to the ancient texts of the Bible and prayer book, using multicultural musical influences such as Celtic, Eastern European, Middle Eastern, and American.

Ira Scott Levin has worked with children in the Jewish community in California for the past 11 years in summer camps, after-school programs, and Hebrew day schools. He has performed alternative high holiday services and family services for Peninsula Temple Sholom, in Burlingame, California, and plays flute and clarinet at Temple Emmanuel 's services. His music can be found on six recordings. Ira has composed material for two CDs with the rock band Comfy Chair, Elie Wiesel’s Trial of God, the children’s CD Hippo on My Head, The Sultan of Time, and a Jewish Soulfolk CD, Madlik Oti. He has recorded a music video for Velvet Mustache and a full-length video for the television pilot Uncle Eye Show. His “Part of the Divine” received an Honorable Mention in the Northern California Songwriter’s Association Song of the Year contest.

Jeff Marder plays keyboards for Cirque du Soleil’s O in Las Vegas, Nevada. He toured as the associate conductor for the national tour of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, having also played keyboard for the Broadway production. He toured in 1999 and 2000 as music director of the Big Apple CircusStage Show. From 1993 to 1999 he toured as pianist for the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble. His Friday Evening Jazz Shabbat Service has been performed numerous times at congregations in the New York and Philadelphia areas, and his Song of Miriam was premiered by Cantor Barbra Lieberstein. At age 12, Jeff made his piano debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music. He has also been a visiting artist/lecturer at Middlebury College and Kenyon College. Jeff holds music degrees from William Paterson University and New York University.

After completing his undergraduate studies at California State University, Northridge, and Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Hazzan Keith Miller went on to study hazzanut with renowned Cantors Allan Michelson, z''l, and Meir Finkelstein in Los Angeles. Hazzan Miller was accepted into membership in the Cantors Assembly in 1996 and received Hazzan-Minister commission in 1999. Since 1993, Hazzan Miller has been Hazzan and Director of Education at Kehillat Ma’arav in Santa Monica, California. He has served on the Board of Directors of Los Angeles Hebrew High School, as Co-Chair of the Bureau of Jewish Education Religious School Principal Council, and as Cantors Assembly representative to the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. He is currently Treasurer of the Cantors Assembly, Western Region.

Wendy Morrison is a Maryland native from a family in which everyone sang and played a musical instrument. Having learned to play piano from her mother when she was five, she later learned to play accordion, whistle, concertina, and banjo. She attended high school in South America and learned Hebrew as an adult. A member of Tikvat Israel in Rockville, Maryland, she tutors b'nei mitzvah, and teaches Hebrew in local Hebrew schools. She also teaches music and repairs accordions at the House of Musical Traditions in Takoma Park. A performer with two Klezmer bands, Klezmos and Klezcentricity, she began composing Jewish music around 1999. She founded the band Shalshelet (unrelated to the Foundation for New Jewish Liturgical Music) in 2002.

Cantor Ken Richmond graduated from the H. L. Miller Cantorial School at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2004, receiving the Arthur Einstein Award in composition. For his senior project he wrote a Friday night service in klezmer/Hasidic style in collaboration with his wife, Shira Shazeer. He has performed, composed, and taught classes on Yiddish songs, nigunim, and klezmer in the United States and internationally, with the Yale Klezmer Band, the Klezmanaics, and Fish Street Klezmer, his duet with Shira. His latest Fish Street Klezmer CD is Intoxicated: Yiddish Songs of Love and Drinking, and the Klezmaniacs' Oy Vey, Rebenu will be released soon. Richmond is the cantor of Midway Jewish Center, in Syosset, New York, where he is privileged to work with Rabbi Rafi Rank, president of the Rabbinical Assembly.

Hernán Marcelo Rog was born in 1965 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Trained in piano and organ at the Manuel de Falla Conservatory of Music in Buenos Aires, he has served as choir director and organist for numerous congregations in the Argentine capital, including 12 years at the Ohr Hadash Hebrew Congregation. Rog comes from a family of musicians and hazzanim, and has been a member of numerous musical ensembles playing Jewish music as well as jazz. "Modim Ana hnu Lakh" is one of several liturgical pieces he has composed.

Lawrence Rush is a composer and lyricist as well as a professional singer and actor. His choral compositions include a complete Friday night Shabbat service for cantor, choir, and organ and Kedusha for cantor and large chorus. He has composed art songs, popular songs, and musicals. He is currently a member of the BMI Musical Theater Workshop and is working on a new musical and an opera. As a performer, he was a full-time member of the San Francisco Opera chorus and has performed many roles in both opera and musical theater. Most recently, he was seen as Bob Cratchit in the national tour of Scrooge, the Musical. He has sung tenor in Park Avenue Synagogue's Shabbat quartet for many years.

Rebecca Schwartz is a professional singer, songwriter, and guitarist; a Hebrew song leader; a cantorial soloist; and an educator. She has performed and taught music since 1975, and currently works at Old York Road Temple --Beth Am and Congregation Rodeph Shalom in the Philadelphia area. Rebecca has released two albums: Only Time Can Tell (original love songs) and The Light of Shabbat. Rebecca recently created and presented "The Power of Prayer Through Music – Enhancing Worship With Song" for the 29th Annual Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education. She is married and has two children.

Gershom Sizomu was born in 1969 in Uganda. His father was the Abayudaya community's rabbi and mohel, and his maternal grandfather was the community's chief rabbi. He became the community rabbi upon his father's death in 1991. He and his family have been active musicians in the community for many years, setting much of the Jewish liturgy to traditional African rhythms and harmonies. He received a BA in education from the Islamic University in Uganda, and later founded and led the only Jewish high school in Uganda and the Abayudaya Yeshiva. He is currently a student in the rabbinic program at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife Tziporah and their two children. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco.