Some are universally sung classics, others vintage Breslover, Skulen, or Vizhnitz niggunim
It’s an album JOEY NEWCOMB created in order to transport his listeners, but not on a world tour of Morrocco, Poland, and Costa Rica as he did on his Big Avoidas album. This time, it’s to the holy court of Rav Itche Meir Morgenstern in Yerushalayim. Yet as much as listeners can feel themselves drawn there, Joey Newcomb says he really recorded his latest album, HISKASHRUS, for himself. It’s a collection of the niggunim he’s heard at the davening and tishen of the London-born mekubal at his yeshivah, Toras Chochom, on Rechov Ohalei Yosef.
“I was zocheh to get connected to the tzaddik over the past few years,” Joey says, “and I wanted the music to bring me back to the special experience of being in his presence.”
Joey’s first encounter with this special personality was in the summer of 2022, when Rav Itche Meir came to New York for a wedding and the Kehal Mevakshei Hashem community in Lawrence hosted a parlor meeting for his mosdos. Joey was asked to come and provide music, but throughout the evening he found he could barely remove his eyes from the Rebbe’s face.
“Yet when he looked at me, I looked away,” Joey relates, “and I left without talking to him.” The next day, Joey was sitting on a domestic flight, and noticed the person next to him learning a sefer he had never seen before.
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