Speakers Cantor Jeff Klepper and Cantor Robbie Solomon

Included with Museum admission

Cantors Jeff Klepper and Robbie Solomon will present a program tracing the influence of the 1960’s Folk Music Revival from the streets of Greenwich Village to Jewish summer camps to the contemporary synagogue. The program will include audio and visual recorded material as well as live demonstrations by Jeff and Robbie, whose own compositions have become part of the standard repertoire in progressive synagogues and beyond.

Cantor Robbie Solomon of Baltimore Hebrew Congregation is internationally known as a composer of Jewish choral works and synagogue repertoire. His stirring anthem “Leaving Mother Russia”, written in 1979, became the rallying cry of the Soviet Jewry movement. He has since authored dozens of songs of Jewish content, including “World of Our Fathers”, “Falasha Nevermore”, Peace by Piece,” and is well known as a performer/song writer with the popular Jewish music group SAFAM. In addition to over ten original CD’s with SAFAM, and several of his own production, Cantor Solomon’s works have been performed and recorded by numerous cantors and choirs throughout the world.

Cantor Jeff Klepper is a widely respected and influential musical figure in the North American Jewish community. Composer of hundreds of Jewish songs, his melody for “Shalom Rav,” (co-written with Rabbi Daniel Freelander in 1973) is sung throughout the world. Beginning in the 1970s Klepper, along with the late Debbie Friedman and others, created a new style of synagogue music called, “American Nusach.” Jeff was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and earned a Masters in Music from Northeastern Illinois University. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music from HUC-JIR in 2005. He co-edited the song section in the Reform prayer book, Mishkan T’filah, and co-founded (with Debbie Friedman) the annual Hava Nashira song-leader workshop.