Joyce Rosenzweig, M.S.

Joyce Rosenzweig serves as Professor of Practice in Jewish Music and Performance for the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music (DFSSM) at HUC-JIR/New York. A pianist and conductor, she performs frequently in concerts throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Israel. A native of Houston, she studied piano performance at Oberlin Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music, and Indiana University, choral conducting at Westminster Choir College, and art song and chamber music at the Banff Centre of the Arts (Canada), the Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom Music Festival, Round Top Music Festival (Texas), and the Franz Schubert Institute (Vienna), where she was awarded first prize in lieder accompaniment. She has collaborated in recitals with ensembles from the New York Philharmonic and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and appeared as guest soloist with the New Orleans Philharmonic and the Texas Festival Orchestra. She has performed in all of the major concert halls of New York, including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Town Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, the Jewish Museum, The Center for Jewish History, and the Museum for Jewish Heritage. She was responsible for commissioning over a hundred new compositions, and premiered them in concerts throughout the U.S. with the Fiati Chamber Players. She performed in recitals throughout North America under the sponsorship of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation.

A leading figure in Jewish music, Rosenzweig is a sought-after accompanist, conductor, master class presenter, lecturer, coach, arranger, and authority on Jewish art and synagogue music. She has collaborated in concert with most of the cantors of this generation. She has been featured at the International Jewish Music Festival (Amsterdam), the Jewish Cultural Festival (Berlin), the Ashkenaz Festival (Toronto), the Chicago and Charlotte Yiddish Institutes, Klezkamp, the North American Jewish Choral Festival, URJ Biennials, and at annual Cantorial conventions for both the Conservative and Reform movements. Her recent concert tours have taken her to Prague, Budapest, Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Berlin, Amsterdam, Montreal, Halifax, Aspen, San Diego, Los Angeles, Boston, Houston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Miami, and New Orleans.

Rosenzweig is a dedicated educator of cantors and synagogue musicians, having served for more than three decades on the faculty of Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music (DFSSM) at HUC-JIR/New York. She has been an adjunct professor and the Lippitz Mentor in the Sacred Arts at the Jewish Theological Seminary since 2004. She teaches courses in Yiddish, Israeli, and Sephardic song repertoire, modal harmony, and is the conductor of the School of Sacred Music Chorus. She has served as Music Director of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in Manhattan since 1994, where she conducts a 40 person volunteer choir and has created one of the most dynamic and emulated Shabbat and High Holiday worship experiences today.

Rosenzweig can be heard as a pianist on the following CD’s: A Leyter tsum Himl (A Ladder to Heaven) with Cantor Robert Abelson, Chalamti Chalom (I Dreamt a Dream) with Cantor David Berger, Eybike Lider (Eternal Songs) with mezzo-soprano Caroline Chanin, and Dreaming in Yiddish with the well-known Yiddish singer, Adrienne Cooper, z”l.