Music Career
Louis Danto performed throughout the world to critical and popular acclaim. In December 1965, he chanted a special prayer at Tito Schipa's funeral in New York at the request of the family with leading singers from the Metropolitan Opera in attendance. In September 1984, he sang before Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens to an inter-faith audience of 16,000 and millions of television viewers.
He recorded 24 solo albums for RCA, DaCamera, Musical Heritage Society, and Cadenza. The most recent recordings include Arias and Songs of Love, made during his 1995 concert tour of Europe, recorded with the State Opera of Prague and I Heard a Voice From Heaven recorded with violist Rivka Golani, both released in the spring of 1996. In December 1997 he released Music From The Soul of a People.
Danto studied Hazzanut with conductor Leo Low and composer Herman Zalis. He expanded his knowledge of Jewish sources at the Yeshiva of Mirr where he studied from 1950 to 1954. He served as a cantor at the Jewish Center of Atlantic Beach, New York, Park Synagogue in Cleveland, Ohio, Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda synagogue in Toronto. After his retirement from Beth Emeth Bais Yehuda in 1998, he was honoured with the title Cantor Emeritas and remained an important part of the synagogue.
During his 1989 East-European tour of Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa, Kiev and Budapest he discovered the manuscripts of many songs from the long-lost original classics of Jewish music, several of which he recorded for the first time on his Gems of the Jewish Operetta and Masters of the Jewish Art Song/The St. Petersburg School.
In February 1998, Danto received an Honorary Doctorate in Music from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.
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