So who is this Reb Shaya, you ask? So I’ll tell you (a little):

At about age 5, after banging on my aunt’s piano for hours, I begged my parents to give me piano lessons, but the teacher said I was too young. So after banging around for another couple of years, they finally gave me lessons starting at age seven. I continued taking lessons in classical piano (I truly wasn’t interested in anything else) through college. I also played French horn in the school bands and orchestras through high school. I also did a good deal of composition, and got a degree in Music Theory and Composition from the University of Minnesota.

I thought I was destined to become a college professor and write operas, but the Creator had other plans. Shortly after my marriage, instead of going to graduate school, I ended up with my wife Miriam in Brooklyn, learning Torah and working part time. Meanwhile, I had discovered my grandfather’s record collection, and was introduced to the beauties of Chassidic music (to which I had been only superficially exposed, although I did a lot of cantorial work even as a youngster). Eventually, I became a Chossid myself (no, not Chabad, although Miriam is); I was actually attracted to a group related to the one my grandfather came from, originally from Ukraine (no, not Breslav either).

Although I had been involved with Jewish music throughout the years, doing a little of everything, I never wanted to make it a full time career because I was not interested in compromising my values to create a commercial product. Since the Jewish musical world abandoned the approach of Ben Zion Shenker (who was kind of a mentor for me in the early days), I’ve been very critical of the road they’ve taken, and I never wanted to be a part of that scene. So although I did perform, record and arrange here and there, I didn’t really have a significant amount of time for music until I moved to Israel in 2005. That’s when I began to play the fiddle and settle down to some serious recording, the results of which you find on this site.