MULLER, BENJAMIN

MULLER, BENJAMIN (1947– ), ḥazzan. Muller was born in Geneva, Switzerland, where his grandfather, Samuel Sternberg, who was also his first teacher, was a ḥasidic ḥazzan. Muller attended Mir yeshivah in Jerusalem and studied voice development in Milan. He served as ḥazzan in Montreal and in Johannesburg, where he also studied ḥazzanut under both Shelomoh Mandel and Abraham Himmelstein. In 1975 he became the chief ḥazzan of the Shomre Hadass congregation in Antwerp. He recorded ḥazzanut and ḥasidic melodies and his rendering of seliḥot was broadcast annually on television from Belgium to all Western Europe. The wide range   of his powerful tenor voice can be compared to the greatest opera singers. He is also a well-known exponent of the works of Yossele rosenblatt . Besides singing, Muller is also a composer and orchestrator of cantorial recitatives and other Jewish concert works. (Akiva Zimmerman / Raymond Goldstein (2nd ed.)