Voice Over     

His real name is Motty Vizel, and after his voice changed and he left the music studio for the beis medrash, he eventually reemerged as a popular adult vocalist. Today he’s even a bit of a mentor to a younger version of himself, 13-year-old Bentzy Kletzkin — the self-taught pianist and guitarist with the golden voice who was catapulted to the stage when he was just ten. The two have made several recordings together (including “Vehoser Mimeni” and Rabbi Dovid Hofstedter’s “Maoz Tzur”), and we couldn’t resist bringing them together for our own personal concert, with Benzty bent over the piano as he sings harmony to Motty’s “Gutt Shabbos” classic.

By the time you read this, Bentzy will actually no longer be a “wunderkind,” but a “wunderteen,” as he dons the chassidishe levush of a bar mitzvah bochur. But he still has those star qualities discovered a little over two years ago: an impressively wide range, absolute control over his vocal chords, and a confident stage presence coupled with a youthful innocence that wins the hearts of any audience.

“My first performance was when I was ten and a half,” Bentzy says. “It was about two weeks before Chanukah, and I’d joined the Chassidimlach boys choir, directed by Yanky Levinger. He wanted to test my range, so he asked me to sing a solo, and I guess he realized there was something there. We were scheduled to perform at a private event together with Malchus Choir, and Yanky Levinger called Pinchas Bichler, the director, and told him to give me a solo. It was a section of Avraham Fried’s Aderaba, and it was the first time that I stepped away from the choir to sing alone.”

It didn’t take long before the phones began to ring. That very night, people had seen the concert clip and reached out to Bichler and Levinger to book the child soloist who’d hit the high notes so effortlessly. Soon Bentzy Kletzkin was in the spotlight.