Mikhail Davidovich Alexandrovich (Balvi District

Balvi District

Balvi District was an administrative division of Latvia, located in Latgale region, in the country's east. It was organized into two cities and nineteen parishes, each with a local government authority...

, 23 July 1914 - Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

, 3 July 2002) was a Latvian tenor

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

, and cantor

Cantor

Cantor is surname of:* Andrés Cantor , Spanish-language soccer announcer* Anthony Cantor , British diplomat* Arthur Cantor , American theatrical producer* Aviva Cantor , American journalist, lecturer and author...

, internationally acclaimed as a fine performer of classical and popular repertoire in several languages.

Biography

Mikhail Alexandrovich, or Misha, was born on the 23 of July 1914,in the village of Berger, Lucinski County, Vitebsk

Vitebsk

Vitebsk, also known as Viciebsk or Vitsyebsk , is a city in Belarus, near the border with Russia. The capital of the Vitebsk Oblast, in 2004 it had 342,381 inhabitants, making it the country's fourth largest city...

 (now Bērzkalne parish, Balvi District, Latvia

Latvia

Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

).

From 1920-26, aged 6 to 12, he gained popularity as a child prodigy. He studied at and graduated from the Riga Conservatory. For a long time he was a cantor

Hazzan

A hazzan or chazzan is a Jewish cantor, a musician trained in the vocal arts who helps lead the congregation in songful prayer.There are many rules relating to how a cantor should lead services, but the idea of a cantor as a paid professional does not exist in classical rabbinic sources...

 at synagogue

Synagogue

A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...

s in Riga

Riga

Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...

, Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

 and Kaunas

Kaunas

Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania and has historically been a leading centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. During Russian Empire occupation...

. From 1940 onwards he was a concert

Concert

A concert is a live performance before an audience. The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, a choir, or a musical band...

 and chamber music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 singer in the USSR. He emigrated to live in Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 1971-1974, then to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 1975-1990, and from 1990 until his death he lived in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

.

The Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov

Osvaldo Golijov

Osvaldo Noé Golijov is a Grammy award–winning composer of classical music.-Biography:Osvaldo Golijov was born in and grew up in La Plata, Argentina, in a Jewish family that had emigrated to Argentina in the 1920s from Romania and Russia.Golijov has developed a rich musical language, the result of...

 wrote a version of "K'vakarat" (text from the prayer of Yom Kippur) for cantor Misha Alexandrovich and the Kronos Quartet

Kronos Quartet

Kronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...

.

Recordings

He recorded seventy 78's and LP

LP album

The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

s with a total circulation of twenty two million copies.

• CD. The Art of Misha Alexandrovich. Cantorial recitatives, Hebrew and Yiddish songs, classical arias and art songs.