Leib Glantz

Who was Leib Glantz?

Leib Glantz was a Russian-born lyrical tenor cantor, Composer, Musicologist of Jewish music, Writer, Educator and Zionist leader.

He was born in 1898 in Kiev, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. His father and both grandfathers were important cantors with Chassidic backgrounds. Leibele, as he was fondly nicknamed, was eight years old when he first appeared as a cantor in Kiev. Word spread swiftly about the child prodigy, and he was engaged to appear in concerts all over Europe. In his teens he organized and conducted a large choir in his father’s Talner Chassidic synagogue.

Glantz studied piano with the Ukrainian pianist and composer, Nikolai Tutkovski, and later graduated in piano and composition under composer Reinhold Gliere at the Kiev Music Conservatory. In those years Glantz traveled numerous times as a delegate to congresses of the He’Chalutz movement and to World Zionist Congresses. He also assumed the position of chief editor of the Labor Zionist newspaper Ard Un Arbeit.

In July 1926, due to his intensive Zionist activism, and the growing antagonism towards the Jews by the Romanian regime in Besarabia, Glantz left Eastern Europe.