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Back in Nashville they called you "Dan the Music Man." You were a college student, singing and teaching at Congregation Micah. That's where we met, when Kol B'seder came to do a concert (January 26, 1991, as I recall.)
Decades ago, when I was cantor of Beth Emet Synagogue in Evanston, IL, Debbie Friedman came to sing at my shul one Friday night. It was Shabbat Shirah, January 29, 1988. Debbie had concerts in the area on Saturday and Sunday, and somehow I had learned that she was free on Friday. (It was just Debbie - those were the days before "the band.") So I called her a couple of weeks before and invited her to sing with me on the bima—very simple, low-key and haimish. She accepted.
If there is any justice in the world, Basya Schechter’s new CD, Songs of Wonder, will be nominated and win a Grammy—it’s that good. After a decade on the road with Pharoah’s Daughter, her Mid-east-Klezmer-Euro-pop-fusion jam-band, Basya has found her true voice in (of all things) eighty year-old Yiddish poems about life and longing by Abraham Joshua Heschel.
Every Friday afternoon, a thousand or more lovers of cantorial artistry make a point to scroll through Facebook to watch a master cantor sing prayers and tell stories about the generation of cantors who taught and influenced him. Cantor Jacob Ben Zion Mendelson, 76, known to the Jewish world as “Jackie” is not just a cantor. He is a cantor’s cantor. In Yiddish, a chazzn. (Try saying that in one syllable, and you will begin to understand.)