New York Times, Monday, August 18, 1997
Section B; Page 8; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk 
Moshe Ganchoff Is Dead at 92; Cantor in the Odessa Tradition

By ROBERT McG. THOMAS Jr. 

Moshe Ganchoff, a cantor and composer widely acknowledged as 
one of the last great exponents of the Odessa tradition of 
liturgical music, died last Monday at a hospital near his 
home in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. He was 92.

During an acclaimed career in which he served as cantor at a 
number of New York synagogues, gave international concerts, made 
recordings, taught at the Hebrew Union School of Sacred Music 
and performed weekly on The Jewish Daily Forward's radio station, 
Mr. Ganchoff's most impressive credential may have been his 
longtime role as the official cantor for Passover and High 
Holy Days services at Grossinger's. 

If it seems strange that a cantor, even a lyric tenor known 
for his breathtaking improvisations, would be a headline 
attraction at a Catskills resort, it is at least partly 
because there has been a striking decline in the everyday 
appreciation of the timeless subtleties of Jewish liturgical 
music.

There was a time when ordinary worshipers at a synagogue were 
so passionately familiar with the underlying music and so 
attuned to the styles, talents and limitations of the various 
cantors that they would discuss them endlessly, like opera 
buffs weighing the appeal of a Caruso or a Pavarotti.

Mr. Ganchoff, who emerged as a star in the 1940's and continued 
as a more or less full-time performer until the mid-1970's, 
seemed only too well aware that he was keeping a dying tradition 
alive. Toward the end of his career, he routinely reined in his 
talent at worship services, knowing that few in the congregation 
would recognize, much less appreciate, his vocal virtuosity.

"He was a cantor's cantor," is the way his former student Jack 
Mendelson put it recently. "Only other cantors could really 
appreciate him."

Given his standing, it is hardly surprising that Mr. Ganchoff 
was born in Odessa, the Ukrainian city that for centuries has 
been known as a hothouse of Jewish arts and culture, especially 
music. What is somewhat surprising is that Mr. Ganchoff did not 
receive his early training in Odessa but in Toledo, Ohio.

When he was taken there as a child, the vagaries of migration 
had made Toledo something of a Little Odessa, attracting a 
number of the great Odessa-trained cantors of the day.

Mr. Ganchoff, the son of an accomplished sign painter, grew up 
listening to and learning from a series of masters, among them 
Simon Zemachson, Mendel Shapiro and the Detroit-based Arye Leib 
Rutman.

Mr. Ganchoff's talent was discovered when he joined a schoolboy 
choir, and by the time he was in his late teens he was so good 
and so determined to become a cantor that he traveled to New York 
to study with a series of great cantors, including Joshua Lind 
and Jacob Rapaport, and eventually Mordecai Hershman.

In 1928, at the age of 21, he got his first position as cantor, 
at the Hunts Point Jewish Center in the Bronx, and over the next 
decade and a half, as word of his talent spread, he was lured to 
a succession of posts in Brooklyn.

In 1944, when the death of David Roitman, "the poet of the pulpit," 
created a vacancy at the Congregation Shaare Zedek on West 93d 
Street in Manhattan, a veritable Carnegie Hall of Jewish music, 
the congregation auditioned the great cantors of the day and chose 
Mr. Ganchoff as Mr. Roitman's successor.

He remained with the congregation until 1957, when he became the 
cantor at Grossinger's, a part-time position that allowed him to 
fill in as guest cantor at various synagogues, to give concerts 
here, in South America and in Israel and to continue his work as 
a composer, creating innovative melodies for ancient texts.

As a composer, Mr. Ganchoff was so prolific that he wrote a new 
composition for each of his weekly radio programs for 25 years.

For all his talent, Mr. Ganchoff's music appealed to a narrow 
base of fans. As his wife, Peggy, recalled recently, when they 
were introduced in 1955 even she had never heard of him.

"I didn't even know what a cantor was," she said, explaining that 
at the Reform synagogue she attended as a girl in Cleveland, the 
cantor was merely a soloist in the choir.

When she finally did hear Mr. Ganchoff sing, she got an inkling 
of what all the fuss was about. "I didn't understand much of what 
he was doing," she said, "but when I looked at the people around 
me, their faces had such rapture it looked as if they were in 
heaven."

Mrs. Ganchoff, her husband's only survivor, was able to hear a 
side of him few of his fans may have known existed.

"Cantor was his profession, but he was a singer," she said, 
recalling that the man who had deepened the religious experience 
of thousands used to sing love songs to her, making them up as 
he went along.