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Music
A Musical Reunion
Cantor Deborah Katchko-Gray calls her recently released four CDs “a fresh look at old gems.” A Suite Shabbat, recorded live in 2005 at a Friday night service and remastered, highlights her clear soprano voice in cantorial favorites and contemporary compositions, accompanied by the Tourmaline String Quartet. She includes tributes to her grandfather, cantor and composer Alfred Katchko, in this recording as well as in A Musical Reunion, a collection of liturgy and Yiddish folksongs featuring duets with her cousin Cantor Leopold Szneer. The recordings would be more compelling if the sound was crisper; in Reunion she is sometimes little more than an echo. Hanukkah Songs of Light and Hope offers a dozen pop-infused English and Hebrew holiday songs, and Shabbat Jam introduces the Talented Teens choir of Temple Shearith Israel in Ridgefield, New Jersey. —Rahel Musleah
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