Moscow Male Jewish Choir

The Moscow Male Jewish Cappella started its history back to 1989, when in the Moscow Great Choral Synagogue with the assistance and personal support of the President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, the Jewish community of the USSR and the American Jewish charity organization “Joint” founded the Male Jewish Choir of the Academy of Cantorial Art.

From 1998 to 2012, the choir worked at the Moscow Jewish Community Center in “Maryina Roscha” and was called the “Hasidic Cappella”.

Since 2012, the Moscow Male Jewish Cappella has been working at the Maimonides State Classical Academy and with the support of the Russian Jewish Congress.

In 2018, the collective began to actively participate in the cultural programs of the World Congress of Mountain Jews, performing in several major projects and events organized in Russia, the USA and Israel.

Currently the choir works under the auspices of the international charitable foundation of the Mountain Jews STMEGI.

The collective’s extensive repertoire includes Jewish liturgical music, songs in Yiddish and Hebrew, Russian folk songs, and works of world classics.

The choir is one of the few recognized professional Jewish academic collectives in the world and the only one in Russia.

“The Moscow Male Jewish Cappella, in my opinion, is the best professional Jewish musical group in the world,” Joseph Malovany, the co-founder of the collective in 1989, the chief cantor of the 5th avenue synagogue in New York, said in an interview with “Izvestia” newspaper during his concert tour in Moscow.

The choir employs professional musicians – students and teachers of the Moscow Conservatory, other musical universities in Moscow, artists and soloists of the leading musical theaters and choral groups of the capital city of Moscow.

The Moscow Male Jewish Cappella in its work relies on the traditions of not only Jewish, but also Russian professional choral singing, proving that the richest Jewish culture is an integral part of the multinational Russian and global cultures.

The interest of listeners in Jewish liturgical music everywhere is due to the fact that it was born in the early and mid-XIX century in the countries of Eastern Europe and Russia, it practically ceased. It was performed after the revolution of 1917 and only in the second half of the XX century it began to revive.

The Moscow Male Jewish Cappella has performed with leading Russian and foreign symphony orchestras conducted by A. Katz, M. Gorenstein, Y. Bashmet, R. Kofman and Z. Meta, with outstanding soloists – M. Alexandrovich, N. Lifshits, I. Kobzon, T. Gverdtsiteli, J. Malovany and many others…

In the discography of the collective – 8 CDs, 4 videos (3 CDs and 1 DVD of which were released by the world-famous company “Universal Music”).

The Moscow Male Jewish Cappella has performed concerts in many cities and republics of the former USSR, Russia and in 15 countries of the world.

The choir has performed at the most prestigious concert venues in the world, including the Small, Great and Rachmaninoff Halls of the Moscow P.I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory, the Columns Hall, the Academy of Music and the Karl Orff Hall in Munich, the Teatron Yerushalayim in Jerusalem, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York; it has won a huge number of fans among listeners in our country and other countries of the world.

The choir has repeatedly sung in front of the presidents of Russia, the USA, Poland, Israel, and performed concerts in front of royal families of Denmark, Sweden and Norway (on the occasion of the anniversary of the Danish King’s rescue of Jews during World War II).

Among the latest bright projects of the Moscow Male Jewish Cappella is a series of concerts “Le Dor Va Dor” (“From generation to generation”), in the programs of which songs by Soviet composers of Jewish origin were performed, the release of the album “Momele” together with Tamara Gverdtsiteli and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. The CD and vinyl record were released by Universal Music, sold worldwide, the album tracks are available for download on iTunes on the Internet.

28th of November, 2019, the choir celebrated its 30th anniversary with a large concert at the Moscow P.I. Tchaikovsky Conservatoire.