I am a musician and Jewish music researcher, affiliated with the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney. My field of expertise is in the musical experiences and memories of Jewish Holocaust survivors, and I have interviewed over 120 survivors and descendants across four continents over a period of 30 years. In 2010 I was awarded the Barbara and Richard Rosenberg Fellowship at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington DC), the world’s premier institution for Holocaust research. My substantive work position is as the Manager of Research Support in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, at the University of Sydney.

Academic research

I speak regularly at academic conferences and for the public. In April 2018 I gave the Al and Malka Green Lecture in Yiddish at the Anne Tanenbaum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. I have presented eight commissioned (fully funded) papers at venues including the Sibelius Academy in Finland, the Society for Ethnomusicology’s annual conference in New Orleans, Arizona State University, the Center for Jewish History (NYC) and others. I have also presented 21 papers in national and international conferences since 2007.

I have received funding from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture (2007), the Australian Federal Government (2006–2009), the Ian Potter Foundation (2012), the Worldwide Universities Network (2013-14), the Herbert and Valmae Freilich Foundation (2014–16). The most significant funding I have won for my work was as a Co-Investigator for a large grant awarded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.  This £1.8 million grant, ran Performing the Jewish Archive, from 2014 to 2018, and involved performance-based research on four continents. 

My current research continues to focus on the place of Jewish music in memory and commemorative contexts, but I am also widening my interests to examine the impact that displaced European Jewish music and musicians have had on diasporic Jewish communities in the Anglosphere. Together with the acclaimed migration scholar, Associate Professor Anna Boucher, we are completing a monograph for Manchester University Press on the first collection of Holocaust songs, originally published in Bucharest in June 1945.  I am working closely with Professor Gerold Gruber and Dr Michael Haas (at the Exilarte Center for Banned Music at the University for Music and the Performing Arts, Vienna) on the music and life of Wilhelm Grosz, a promising Austrian Jewish composer who fled to the UK and became a writer of hit popular songs of the 1930s. 

I am also a member of the NeuroMusic Collaborative at the University of Sydney. This interdisciplinary team (neurology, music performance research, musicology, biomedical engineering, dementia and ageing research, music cognition, neuropsychology) is running clinical trials, asking whether intensive music tuition for patients susceptible to neurodegeneration will improve their neuroplasticity. My interest in this topic has been amplified by my personal experiences interviewing musically active Holocaust survivors, most of whom have healthy mental capacity. I believe that active engagement with music not only builds neuroplasticity, but also enables older people to access long-term memories with safety and personal agency.

Musical work

My research is based in creative work. In August 2014 I produced and directed the first Sydney performances of the children’s opera Brundibár at City Recital Hall, Angel Place. Originally completed in 1938 for a Czechoslovak Education Ministry competition, the score of this small work was secretly smuggled into the Terezín ghetto (Theresienstadt), where it became the most popular, most performed and most beloved work for the residents of the ghetto. Our production in Sydney was informed by memories conveyed by Holocaust survivors in Sydney, Israel, the UK and the USA, in particular Ela Weissberger, Jerry Rind, and Edith Sheldon.

My most recent creative research project involves the musical experience and memories of Guta Goldstein, a child survivor in the Łódź Ghetto who lives in Melbourne. Together with the renowned film maker Tim Slade, I have produced a documentary on Guta’s musical life, where we have interviewed her and brought to life her daily practice of singing to remember her friends and family. This documentary, Singing up the Past,  has been entered into major international film festivals. Stay tuned for more information about this exciting project in 2024.

I am a pianist, composer, and arranger. I used to play trumpet and French horn (badly) and learned percussion with Colin Piper (SSO). Since the age of 12 I have been a professional singer. I began as a boy soprano in the Australian Opera Children’s Chorus, singing in productions of Tosca (conducted by Maestro Carlo Felice Cillario), La Bohème (with Luciano Pavarotti in the role of Rodolfo) and Boris Godunov (directed by Elijah Moshinsky). I have sung with professional vocal ensembles such as the Australian Chamber Singers, the Contemporary Singers, Cantillation, Philharmonia Motet Choir and others.  For close to 13 years I was Cantor and Director of Music and Pastoral Care at Temple Emanuel Woollahra. These days I sing in Orthodox Synagogue services. I have been Choirmaster at the Great Synagogue, vocal consultant and choir coach for Central Synagogue, and I continue my family’s 75-year association with North Shore Synagogue as their Choirmaster. 

Borowsky Chazanut Singers

Through the vision of Dr Ted Arnold and Simon Singer, I now lead a special male voice choir unaffiliated to any Synagogue, called the Borowsky Chazzanut Singers. Our singers come from a variety of congregations – the Great, Central, North Shore, Emanuel, Kadimah and others. Our name honours the magnificent baritone Bob Borowsky, who sadly passed away in 2023. Bob’s contribution to the world of Orthodox Jewish choral music cannot be over-estimated. A co-founder of the Johannesburg Jewish Male Choir, he was a towering ambassador for the traditions of Jewish chazzanut (the cantorial tradition), with an outstanding dramatic baritone voice that scarcely wavered in almost 90 years of active singing career. 

Contact me here!