Buffalo Music: Five choruses join together at Temple Beth Zion

By Dale Anderson
(Image above: Beth Zion Cantor Susan Lewis-Friedman at the mic, center. Photo by Dale Anderson)

How can you start to mend the terrible memories of a massive crime against humanity? You need an army of musicians. “Into the Light: A Kristallnacht Commemorative Concert” deployed dozens of them Tuesday evening in the sanctuary of Temple Beth Zion.

It took four score and a few more voices — five choruses joined together — to roll back the horror after Beth Zion Rabbi Brent Gutmann began the program by telling the harrowing tale of his grandfather’s escape from Kristallnacht in Bavaria on Nov. 9, 1938, when Nazis sacked and burned Jewish synagogues, businesses and homes all over Germany.

Beth Zion Cantor Susan Lewis-Friedman led the breakthrough in the second section of the program, titled “Courage,” with a powerful solo supported by all of the voices rising together in a humongous harmony.

The mood lifted more as Toronto-based jazz singer Julie Michels, backed by the chorus from Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple, belted out Gloria Estefan’s “Coming Out of the Dark.” It got us in the pews clapping along..

The audience gave a standing ovation for the next selection — a stellar duet by cellist Roman Mekinulov and violinist Anton Shelepov from the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra on Smetana’s “The Moldau” from “Ma Vlast (My Fatherland).”

For the coup de grace a few moments later, 20 members of Buffalo’s Westminster Presbyterian Church Choir stepped forward, unaccompanied and marvelously modulated, for a number based on words found on a cellar wall at a concentration camp after World War II.

The other choruses included the Kol Zimrah Jewish Community Singers from Chicago, Buffalo’s Trinity Episcopal Choir and the Beth Zion Choir, with guests. Other vocal soloists were cantors Irwin Gelman from Buffalo’s Congregation Beth Abraham, Mark Horowitz from Buffalo’s Jewish Community Center and David Rosen from Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto.

Fourteen readers gave commentary and four keyboardists provided piano and organ accompaniment. This program was the first in the 2026-2027 Temple Beth Zion Stained Glass concert series. Upcoming programs TBA.