The Immortal Khazntes: Cantorial legends brought to life – in concert
By Deborah Meyers Greene
The Immortal Khazntes, an international group of the world’s leading virtuosos in early cantorial music, will present their only scheduled live performance in the Detroit Metro area on Tuesday, October 13, at 6:30 p.m. The concert will be at Temple Beth Emeth. Presented as a community service, by a long list of co-sponsors (below), The Immortal Khazntes concert tickets are free of charge, but registration is requested on Jlive at https://jlive.app/events/16669.
Khazntes is the early-20th century Yiddish term used to describe Jewish women who sang khazones, the emotionally imbued rendering of traditional cantorial music.
The six-member all-woman troupe will celebrate — in English, Hebrew, and Yiddish — the immortal Khazntes, the women of the early-20th century who dared to express their belief and their talent decades before their voices were accepted in synagogues or temples.
On the same date, from noon to 1 p.m., 2022 South Thayer, University of Michigan students and Ann Arbor-area community members, will have the amazing opportunity to sing and speak with members of the troupe. Contact [email protected] with questions.
The concert will feature the four vocalists who recorded the historically significant album The Return of the Immortal Khazntes (Dec 2025), which documents the work of contemporary Jewish women’s voices who turn to the cantorial gramophone era to help build their own creative practice and personal projects of heritage reclamation. They are: Judith Berkson (California), an unclassifiable singer, cantor, composer, and scholar whose work tears down many barriers between worlds of sound; Shahanna McKinney-Baldon (Wisconsin), a musician and activist who is currently working on a research and performance project dedicated to the groundbreaking career of Madame Goldie Steiner, the only known African American woman performer of khazones in the cantorial golden age period; internet celebrity Riki Rose (New York), a singer who has moved beyond her Satmar Hasidic community to frame a liberatory career as an artist and creative persona; and Rachel Weston (U.K.), a cantor and Yiddishist who applies her deep knowledge of Yiddish vocal music to her approach to khazones.
They will be accompanied by U.K.-based rising stars in the traditional music world Fran & Flora (Francesca Ter-Berg and Flora Curazon).
Serving as Ann Arbor’s 2026 cantors’ concert that the Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor stages each year, this all-embracing community-wide event enjoys a sponsorship list that comprises the entire Jewish community and beyond, including the Ann Arbor Community for Traditional Music and Dance (AACTMAD); Beth Israel Congregation; Center for Jewish Studies, EMU; Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor and Community Engagement Fund; Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, U-M; Network | Jewish People of Color; and Temple Beth Emeth, in addition to several individual cantors from around the state of Michigan.
