The Yiddish Book Center's

Wexler Oral History Project

A growing collection of in-depth interviews with people of all ages and backgrounds, whose stories about the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture offer a rich and complex chronicle of Jewish identity.

Cantor Benzion Miller on Improvisation in Cantorial Music

Watch now:

Benzion Miller - world-renowned Hasidic cantor and collector and composer of nigunim (wordless melodies) - demonstrates how he uses improvisation to enrich the nigunim he sings.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Benzion Miller.

This excerpt is in English.

Benzion Miller was born in Munich, Germany in 1946.

This interview is part of the Yiddish and the Arts: musicians, actors, and artists series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

Five Synagogues and a Mikve on One Square Block

2 min 33 sec

Impressions of Poland

6 min 18 sec

Benzion Miller Sings Bobever Shabbes Songs

5 min 7 sec

Benzion Miller Sings a Nign from his Great-Grandfather

1 min 37 sec

A Nign Inspired by Church Bells

2 min 2 sec

They Were All My Favorites

1 min 7 sec

Cantorial Music is Baggage

1 min 46 sec

All the Yiddish Music I Know, I Know From WEVD

1 min 7 sec

Shoshanas Yaakov Composed on a German Overnight Train

1 min 37 sec

I Walk Around Improvising All Day: Benzion Miler Shares A Melody Composed in the Car

2 min 39 sec

Meeting Abe Ellstein

1 min 40 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

Themes: