A short history:
In 2014 the legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman and renowned cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot join forces for a musical exploration of liturgical and traditional works for both chamber orchestra and klezmer.
The music of Rejoice with Itzhak Perlman and Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot showcases the confluence between the violinist’s famed classical technique and Helfgot’s magnificent voice, and is the result of a mutual admiration society. “It was a dream to someday sing with him,” remarks Helfgot. “And now the dream has become real.”
For Perlman, the collaboration represents “the completion of a cycle” of accompanying three great voices—Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, and now Helfgot, who serves as Chief Cantor at Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue. The special also represents for him, “the fulfillment of a dream.” In Rejoice with Itzhak Perlman and Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot, these two incomparable virtuosos unite for an evening of cantorial masterpieces, Yiddish folk and theater tunes, Hassidic melodies, and klezmer instrumentals.
Joined at the piano by music director Dr. Hankus Netsky (Chair of Boston’s New England Conservatory Contemporary Improvisation Department), Netsky’s Klezmer Conservatory Band, and the Rejoice Chamber Orchestra under the direction of conductor Russell Ger, Perlman and Helfgot present a program of songs that are alternately joyful and intensely moving, but always concluding with a buoyant climax.