The famed composer and director of the London School of Jewish Song, Yigal Calek, is in need of rachamei Shomayim. His name for Tehillim is Yigal Yisrael ben Blima Gittel.
During the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Yigal led London School of Jewish Song. The Israel-born mechanech had a flamboyant style and exceptional ear for music that propelled his young proteges into stardom across the Jewish world.
Curiously, although Yigal is undoubtedly an innovator, he is also deeply traditional. Thus, while his songs have always been very much in tune with modernity and the zeitgeist, they are nonetheless firmly embedded in the music of the Jewish yesteryear.
Audiences flocked to the choir’s concerts in London, Paris, Yerushalayim, New York and Los Angeles – among countless other cities – and the albums became the musical backdrop for that generation.
That generation all hummed Yigal’s tunes, used them for tefillos, danced to them at weddings, and played the LPs until the scratches rendered the records unplayable.
Yigal, as is well known, has always been a demanding, exacting perfectionist. His rehearsals famously lasted for hours. Every note had to be perfect, every harmony flawlessly synchronized. But it was all worth it in the end. The results were stunning, and the audience appreciation gushing.
And so it continued for a few more years, until eventually Yigal disbanded his choir and turned to other things. From time to time he would reappear with a new group to belt out a few hits in a tribute medley at a variety concert, but that was it. The London School of Jewish Song was no more.
More recently, Yigal has suffered some very difficult health issues and word went around that he needed tefillos: Yigal Yisrael ben Blima Gitel. And so it was that a few of the old choir “boys” decided to arrange an evening of song and nostalgia to cheer his spirits. On the last night of Chanukah in 2021, the impromptu gathering took place – just a couple of dozen guys around a table at someone’s home in Golders Green. Most of them are already grandfathers, all of them were there to cheer up their childhood hero.
Watch the clip below: