denny Schools Periods & Styles book

Moshe Ganchoff 1905 - 1997 "The Cantors' Cantor" Gleaned from many sources (Reprinted from JSM Vol 217 April 2011) Until the very end of his long career, Moshe Ganchoff represented our last connection to the style that earned hazzanut of the early 20th century the sobriquet: Golden Age. He was born in Odessa and emigrated as a young child with his parents to the United States. He received his early hazzanic training in Toledo, Ohio, to which several Odessa-trained cantors had gravitated: Simon Zemachson, Mendel Shapiro and Aryeh Leib Rutman, among them. In his teens he moved to New York for the purpose of studying with Joshua Lind, Jacob Rapaport, and Mordechai Hershman. In 1944 he succeeded David Roitman as cantor at Manhattan's Shaare Zedek on West 93rd Street. In 1957 he was engaged by Grossinger's Hotel in the Catskill Mountains resort area of upstate New York for all major holidays. This allowed him to guest-officiate and concertize widely, as well as to teach and compose. Over a period of 25 years he was featured in a weekly radio program on the Jewish Daily Forward's station, WEVD, and for each show he wrote a new composition. The following appeared in his obituary: If it seems strange that a cantor, even a lyric tenor known for his breathtaking improvisations, would be a headline attraction at a Catskills resort, it is at least partly because there has been a striking decline in the everyday appreciation of the timeless subtleties of Jewish liturgical music. There ...