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Fernand Halphen was born in 1872 and died for France in 1917. A pupil of Gabriel Fauré and Jules Massenet, he won the second Prix de Rome in 1896. Halphen was the author of over a hundred major works, including melodies, symphonies, sonatas, and pieces for the violin, cello, piano, and horn …

Influenced by the Dreyfus affair in her youth, Alice Halphen, born Koenigswarter and wife of Fernand Halphen, had a lifelong interest in Judaism. An enlightened art lover, she ran a popular music salon frequented by many musicians …

(From left to right: Claire and Myrna Barry) Myrna and Clara were born in the Bronx, New York, to Ashkenazi Jewish parents, Herman and Ester, respectively from Russia and Austria, …

Samuel Alman was born in Sobolevka (Russia), in 1877. The sixth child of a family of 14 children, his father was a talmudist and musician, and his mother an amateur …

Harry Kandel was one of the pioneers of klezmer, the traditional dance music of the European Jews, in the United States. Together with his orchestra, which featured two cornets, four …

Geneviève Zadoc-Kahn was the grand daughter of the rabbi Zadoc Kahn and one of the great grand daughters of rabbi Salomon Ulmann. Her childhood wasn’t spared from difficult events : …

Salomone Rossi, or Shlomo Mi-ha-Adumim in Hebrew, came from an old Jewish family in Mantua, where he was born around 1570. Profiting from the tolerance granted to the Jews by …

Joseph Frankel was born in Kiev, Russia (now Ukraine). A Kiev Conservatory trained bandmaster and a band leader in the Tzarist army, he toured the US in 1904 leading the …

Ben-Zion Witler (or Ben-Tsion Vitler, or also BenZion Wittler), was born in 1907 in Belz, in Galicia, and died in 1961. He was a singer, but also an actor and …

Born in Paris on April 23rd, 1917, Renée Lebas (born Leiba) lived with her parents, Romanian Jewish immigrants in France, and her younger sister in the Bastille neighborhood. At the …