Cantor Jeff Warschauer is a hazzan, educator and highly accomplished musician with a sweet,
soulful voice and a friendly, engaging presence. Cantor Warschauer leads exciting, participatory
and innovative services with a creative mix of contemporary and traditional melodies. He
teaches kids and adults about all facets of Jewish music, prayer and Torah reading, and leads
multi-generational choruses and ensembles that enliven synagogue events, draw in potential
new members and strengthen bonds among the membership and with the community at large.
A graduate of the H.L. Miller Cantorial School at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Cantor
Warschauer has served congregations in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Maine and Vermont.
In the Yiddish and klezmer scene, Cantor Jeff Warschauer is internationally renowned as one of
the foremost klezmer mandolinists, as an innovator in the development of a klezmer guitar style,
as a deeply expressive Yiddish singer and as a skillful and inspirational educator. One half of
the Strauss/Warschauer Duo, he was a long-time member of the Klezmer Conservatory Band,
and has been featured in concert and on recordings with Itzhak Perlman, Joel Grey and the late
Theodore Bikel. He is a Music Associate at Columbia University, and is a Founding Artistic
Director and Senior Artistic Advisor of KlezKanada.
Cantor Warschauer speaks Yiddish, and has researched and collected Yiddish and Hebrew
songs and instrumental melodies since the mid-1980s. He received a Bachelor of Music at the
New England Conservatory, and has studied Jewish culture, languages, and religion at the
Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative Yeshiva, Oxford University, Columbia University,
the University of Haifa and Tufts University. He has received numerous awards in music,
community activities, Judaica and musicology, as well as the Amalgamated Bank Prize in
Yiddish, a Massachusetts Folk Arts Fellowship, and the KlezKanada Distinguished Service
Award.