Charles Davidson (b1929)

Davidson's monumental I Never Saw Another Butterfly, a setting of children's poetry from the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia (where only 100 of the 15,000 imprisoned children survived), is unquestionably his best known and most celebrated work. It has been performed throughout the world (more than 2,500 performances) to consistent critical acclaim and is featured on no fewer than eight commercial recordings. It is also the subject of two award-winning PBS documentaries: The Journey of Butterfly and Butterfly Revisited. In 1991, following the collapse of the communist regime and the birth of the Czech Republic, it was performed at a special ceremony in the town of Terezin, presided over by the new president, Vclav Havel, among other dignitaries, and attended by an audience of Holocaust survivors to mark the 50th anniversary of the Germans' creation of the camp and ghetto. Performances followed at Smetana Hall in Prague and the Jesuit Church in Brno.

Davidson is a highly prolific composer and arranger. His catalogue contains more than three hundred works including dozens of synagogue pieces, songs, choral cantatas, entire services, Psalm settings, musical plays, theatrical children's presentations, instrumental pieces, and a one-act opera based on Isaac Bashevis Singer's story Gimpel the Fool. Among the many memorable works in addition to those recorded for the Milken Archive series are The Trial of Anatole Sharansky; Night of Broken Glass, an oratorio in commemoration of Kristallnacht; Hush of Midnight: An American Selihot Service; L'David Mizmor, a service commissioned by the Park Avenue Synagogue; Libi B'Mizrach, a Sephardi synagogue service; and a service in Hassidic style. His oeuvre also includes a number of secular and even non-Jewish holiday choral settings that are performed often by high school and college choirs.

Cantor Davidson is the editor of Gates of Song, a collection of congregational melodies and hymns, author of the book From Szatmar to the New World: Max Wohlberg American Cantor, and author of several cantorial textbooks. He served with distinction as hazzan of Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, from 1966 to 2004. He is currently working on an opera based on another Singer story, The Magician of Lublin.

(Neil W. Levin)