Back Where I Belong

“When Rav Breyer turned to me, I realized that I was being granted the opportunity to fulfill a dream — the professional music world was always my ambition, but it was really more like a fantasy,” Dudi says. “I didn’t believe it would really happen. I was thrilled to be able to organize the choirs for his album. My salary was a serving of cholent and schnitzel from the Shtisel restaurant, which Rav Breyer would bring to me in yeshivah. It sounds pretty silly now, but back then, it was a great deal.”

As he began rehearsing with the choirs, it became clear that Kalish himself was gifted with extraordinary talent. “Back then, to be successful, you really had to understand music — things were a lot more unforgiving in the studio. There was no such thing as computer-generated music or the sophisticated mixing that goes into an album today. You had to get it right, because they couldn’t just click and cut and paste to adjust any mistakes. I had actually learned sheet music from an old Jew, a Holocaust survivor who lived near the Belzer yeshivah on Agripas Street. He had a huge store of classical music that fascinated me. I would sit in his house for hours going over those musical scores. I taught myself to read sheet music and then began writing my own compositions.”