Cantor Harwitt

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Hazzan Jay Harwitt began his singing career in the Junior Congregation at the Baldwin Jewish Center on Long Island. He learned bassoon and saxophone in high school, so that at Yale College he performed with almost every large-scale ensemble on campus, as well as a close harmony men’s singing group. Jay was the founding accompanist and an early music director of the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, conducted the Barnard Glee Club, and sang for ten years in the Oratorio Society of New York. Since coming to the West Coast, Jay has twice participated in groups that performed at the International Zimriyah (Choir Festival) in Jerusalem: the Choir of Valley Beth Shalom, where he continues to instruct B’nai Mitzvah, and the LA Zimriyah Chorale, in which he also remains active.

Cantor Jay organized the congregational klezmer band, whose efforts he gratefully acknowledges. He directs the High Holy Day quartet, and frequently accompanies the Chorale Society of Southern California in rehearsal. He has conducted the pit orchestras for his colleague, Hazzan Judy Sofer, at Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center in their two most recent productions: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Fiddler on the Roof.

Now a member of the Cantors Assembly with the official title of Hazzan, Jay commences his tenth year of service to the Whittier community on July 1, 2007.

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