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Featuring composers from the 3rd International Festival. View composers from the
Rick Calvert 2006│ Kumi, Ori Steve Cohen 2008│ Yedid Nefesh 2006│ Hashkiveinu Susan Colin 2008│ New Moon Erik Contzius 2008│ And Hannah Prayed Daniel Cousin 2006│ Lekha Dodi |
Miriam Ahuvat-El is a Jerusalemite, singer, composer, poet and psalmist. She grew up in a Hasidic family, absorbing their passion and joyous spirit, but embarked on a long search for her own spirituality which led her to become a pioneer in the Jewish Renewal movement in Israel. In her development as a singer, she has come to value the method of gilui ha-kol (unfolding/discovering the voice). She creates music in a diversity of styles and instrumentation, infusing ancient Jewish texts with her individual spirit and faith. Her latest CDs are The Beloved – Devotional Songs to God and Ways of Peace. 
A native of Tel Aviv and a resident of New York City since 1985, Sariel Beckenstein has been composing since the age of 18. His professional acting debut was in Fiddler on the Roof with the Cape Town Opera Company in 1984. He can be heard on the soundtrack of the DreamWorks feature film, The Prince of Egypt. He has performed his one-man musical biography, The Songs That I Shlepped, in Israel and New York. He has served as cantorial soloist at congregations Beth Simchat Torah in Manhattan, and Tehillah in Riverdale, New York. His passion for the music of Israel has led him to perform with lyricistsYoram Tehar Lev and Ehud Manor, and at recent tributes to Manor, Naomi Shemer, and Uzi Hitman. He is well known as an Israeli dance leader and teacher, and has been performing at weddings and other simchas since 1998.
Natan Berenshteyn was born in Kishinev, Moldova and started to play piano at about age 6. He graduated from Kishinev College of Music in classical piano, and from Moldova State Institute of Art with a graduate degree in jazz piano and conducting. He also received degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University in Music Education (undergraduate) and classical piano (graduate). For the past seven years he has been choral director at Congregation Beth Ahabah in Richmond, Virginia.
David Berkenbilt began creating musical arrangements while a member of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School a cappella choir. He is a 1962 graduate of Georgetown Dental School with an MS in pediatric dentistry from Northwestern University. While in private practice in northern Virginia, he sang with The Choral Arts Society of Washington and several area synagogue choirs. Then, inspired by a music theory class he attended on visiting day at his son’s college, he decided to return to school, graduating in 1995 from George Mason University with a degree in composition. Now retired from dentistry, he spends much of his time in theater. He also sings with the Ohr Kodesh Chorale under the direction of P’nina McCabe, where his setting of Ki Hiney Ka Khomer has been heard during the High Holidays. His string quartet was a winner in the Prince Georges Symphony 30th Anniversary Chamber Music Competition. Hanukah Lights and Hanukah Nes Gadol won awards in the Amadeus Choir of Toronto’s annual Christmas/Chanukah song competition. 
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 ofMusic, 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 andJoshua 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.
Andrew Bleckner studied composition with George Crumb at the University of Pennsylvania, and received a PhD in composition in 1995. While there he also received the Paul Rochberg Fellowship, and The Helen L. Weiss Prize for Vocal Music. Currently he is Resident Composer for the Singing City chorus of Philadelphia. Around 1994, he began a spiritual and artistic transformation inspired by the writings of Rabbis Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Michael Lerner. Since then, his primary musical inspiration has come from sacred texts. His setting of Psalm 150 has been performed throughout the US including venues such as the 2006 American Choral Directors Association Southern Convention and the Zamir Chorale of Boston 2006 Spring Concert. His setting of Psalm 42 recently received Honorable Mention in both the Vanguard Premieres Choral Composition Contest and the First Annual Meistersingers Choral Composition Competition. He has received composition awards, grants, and fellowships from ASCAP, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the American Composers Forum, the University of Pennsylvania, and the MacDowell Colony. 
Fred Blumenthal, a native of St. Louis, 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 and 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 is 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.
Rick Calvert is a folk musician and cantorial soloist/temple musician who turned to composing modern settings for liturgical text in 1997. In 1998, his CD, Journeys, was produced through the encouragement of Fran Avni at CAJE 24. His compositions and performances reflect his musical roots in folk/rock and choral music. He has taught music at the Temple Beth Tikvah Religious School in Madison, CT since 1986, and currently serves as cantorial soloist/temple musician there and at Temple Emanu-El in Westfield, NJ. His Yis-m’chu was selected for inclusion in Celebrate Shabbat, a collection of exemplary Shabbat music produced by Craig Taubman. His melody for the Shehecheyanu was selected for use at the ordination ceremony for cantors and rabbis at Hebrew Union College New York in 2001. He has performed extensively in the Northeast and has been a featured evening performer at CAJE since 1999.
Steve Cohen received his training at the Manhattan, Juilliard and Eastman Schools of Music, and has composed a large catalog of symphonic, chamber, liturgical and musical-theater pieces, including the operas The Cop and the Anthem and La Pizza Del Destino. His orchestral composition Juggernaut won the 2004 Composer’s Award given jointly by the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra and the Museum in the Community. His vocal settings of Psalms 84 and 121 took first and second prizes in the 2006 Susan Galloway Sacred Song Award contest, and his setting of Hashkiveinu (chosen for the 2006 Shalshelet Festival) won an award from the New York Treble Singers in 2007. He has arranged and orchestrated numerous scores for orchestras, touring shows and other performing groups. He is a member of New York’s Zamir Chorale and is active in the musical life of Larchmont Temple (where, among other things, he plays Haman each year in the Purimshpiel). 
Susan Colin is a singer, songwriter, cantorial soloist, service leader and performer based in the Dallas area. She has released three CDs of familiar Jewish worship music and original inspirational songs which incorporate various musical styles: Shabbat Favorites, Prayer of the Heart, and Every Day. Her music has been broadcast on National Public Radio stations, Hospice Healing Radio, and internet radio programs. Around the world her songs have been heard at weddings, funerals, healing services and worship services. She has been a featured performer at CAJE, and her setting of Y’varech’cha appears in Transcontinental Music’s Shabbat Anthology IV. She is also founder and director of the Flower Mound Coffeehouse, a live music, non-profit venue featuring an eclectic variety of local and nationally known musicians. 
Raised in Parsippany, New Jersey, Cantor Erik Contzius has an undergraduate degree in psychology from Rutgers College and a Master of Sacred Music from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, School of Sacred Music. His original works for the synagogue, Hineh Ma Tov and Shalom Rav, have been published by Transcontinental Music, and he also has a large self-published catalogue. His music appears on several recordings, including How Excellent is Thy Name, a collection of Jewish art music for solo cantor and pipe organ. He recently performed in Munich at a concert of Vergessene Musik—The Forgotten Music of the German Jewish Reform Movement. He has also performed at the Leo Baeck Institute’s Jewish Vienna and Germany concerts, at the Kennedy Center’s Millenium Stage, and at the International Organ Festival in Goteborg. He served as Composer-in-Residence at Temple Israel of Northern Westchester, and as cantor at Keneseth Israel of Elkins Park and Temple Israel of Omaha. He is currently the Cantor of Temple Israel of New Rochelle. 
Daniel Cousin began his spiritual musical journey while an undergraduate at Harvard University, where he founded Charvard Chai Notes while earning a degree in cognitive neuroscience. He played at simchas from New York to New England, which he continued to do while at Albert Einstein Medical School. He amassed a collection of more than 100 instruments from around the world which he taught himself to play and began incorporating into his compositions. He worked in the hospital by day, while at night he performed at clubs around New York City with his group My Cousin’s Band, and became the house pianist for late night jazz sessions at Smalls in the West Village. He is currently a radiology resident at Yale’s affiliated residency, and performs with his wife, singer Laura Lenes. (