Cantor Charles Davidson, D.S.M., is the Hazzan Emeritus of Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.

A member of the second graduating class of the Cantors Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, he is a gifted and prolific composer who has written a wide variety of synagogue and secular choral music during the past 50 years.

Some of his best-known works include I Never Saw Another Butterfly (1971), a moving musical setting of the children’s poems from the Terezin concentration camp, and Chassidic Sabbath (1961), a Friday night service set in Chassidic style. Also of note is …And David Danced Before the Lord (1966), the first Friday night service to use popular modern musical idioms (jazz-blues), and La Tavla de Dulce (1992), an oratorio commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Jewish expulsion from Spain.

Cantor Davidson has composed a number of oratorios, concert operas, and children’s choral works. A new recording of three of Cantor Davidson’s Jewish choral works, …And David Danced Before the Lord, A Singing of Angels, and Baroque Suite was recently released by Naxos American Classics as part of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music series.

Sephardic Service for the Sabbath (1972-74 and 1990) contains a combination of authentic Sephardic and Yemenite melodies, as well as original compositions by Davidson. According to the composer, the work was not intended to be a scholarly exposition of Jewish ethnomusicology, but rather a personal tribute to the land and people of Israel. The musical inspirations for the service came from melodies overheard by Davidson during his many visits to Israel, as well as from transcriptions by Jewish musicologists.