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Upper West Side Cantors Rebecca Garfein and Dan Singer Perform at Enrico Caruso Room, 8/28

Related: Rebecca Garfein, Dan Singer, Enrico Caruso Room

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Two of the Upper West Side of Manhattan's most renowned Cantors – Rebecca Garfein, Senior Cantor of Congregation Rodeph Sholom, and Dan Singer, Cantor at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue – will perform at the Enrico Caruso Room at Grotta Azzurra Ristorante in Little Italy on Tuesday, August 28, at 8 PM. Both singers are opera-trained and have performed on operatic and concert stages all over the world and will offer an exciting program of memorable arias and American Songbook favorites.

Their performances are part of the Enrico Caruso Room's Tuesday Night Opera Series which began this past April in the very same room where the legendary Neapolitan-born tenor Enrico Caruso frequently sang after his performances at the Met nearly 100 years ago. There is a $20 cover charge. Food and drinks are available in the room starting at 7 PM. There is no food or drinks minimum. For reservations: 212-925-8775.

Cantor Rebecca Garfein, a mezzo-soprano, is the first female Cantor ever to hold the position as Senior Cantor at Congregation Rodeph Sholom. She has also performed in numerous recitals throughout the United States, Israel and Europe. In 1997 she was invited to participate in the Jewish Cultural Festival in Berlin, Germany, and was the first female Cantor to give a solo concert in the same city her late grandfather fled at the start of World War II. The following year, at the same cultural festival in Berlin, she became the first female Cantor to preside in a German synagogue, and released a CD of the live recording of the 1997 concert, Sacred Chants of the Contemporary Synagogue.

On November 10, 2005, at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, she presented the concert and historic CD debut of Golden Chants in America…. Commemorating 350 Years of Jewish Music, 1654-2004. Including music from the Spanish-Portuguese Jews, the synagogue and the Yiddish and Broadway theater, the CD is the first US recording to feature Jewish music spanning 350 years of life in America. Cantor Garfein is also featured soloist on two recordings from the Sacred Music Press, Celebrating the Past and Present, honoring the 50th anniversary of the School of Sacred Music, 1999, and Kol Sasson Kol Simcha, a commemoration of the 125th anniversary of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 2001.

A native of Tallahassee, Florida, Cantor Garfein has been a featured soloist with the Ra'a'na'na Orchestra and the Zamir Chorale at the Jerusalem Theater in Israel and in 2001 was a soloist at the 350th anniversary concert of the Curacao Jewish Community.

Cantor Garfein made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2005 with Mandy Patinkin in a benefit concert for the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater. In 2003, she made her debut at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in a concert celebrating the release of Dr. Ruth Westheimer's book, Musically Speaking. She has been a participant in the opera program at Di Capo Opera in New York City and at the Aspen Music Festival. She recently made her Town Hall debut with Neil Sedaka and Jay Black in another benefit concert for the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater. As a teenager, she was a participant in the Young Artists' vocal program at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts.

Some of her operatic credits include: Isabella in L'Italiana in Algieri (Opera Scenes concert) with DiCapo Opera, NYC; Third Lady in Spring Awakening, Aricie in Milhaud's Trois Opera-Minutes and Zerlina in Don Giovanni and Dorabella in Cosi Fan Tutte (Opera Workshop performance), at the Aspen Music Festival; as well as Alto Soloist in Handel's Messiah, and roles in Werther, Faust, Marriage of Figaro and La Boheme in Shepherd School of Music productions. She was winner of Houston's Gilbert and Sullivan Society Award.

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