Dudley Cohen-Founder of the Zemel Choir

The Zemel Choir

Next Concert + Workshop

Lewandowski Festival

Celebrate With Song CD

Robert Brody

Search Zemel's Site

" NEW " Stay in touch with Zemel

Benjamin Wolf

See Zemel in Cyberspace

Zemel Login

Dudley Cohen attended the City of London School and the Guildhall School of Music. He formed a youth choir, the first to bear the name Zemel (Tsafon Ma’arav London) in 1948 which lasted for about eighteen months. After his National Service, during which time he played the clarinet in the RAF Fighter Command Central Band, and acted as Asst. Bandmaster, he reformed the Zemel Choir in 1955 where he was its conductor and Musical Director until 1975.

Dudley was the first Director of Music at Carmel College and the founder of the Carmel Boys Choir, which functioned from 1957 until 1959. He has also held the post of choirmaster and organist at various synagogues including the Hampstead Synagogue, one of the last bastions of the mixed choir within the United Synagogue. A champion of mixed voice choirs in synagogues, for the past twenty-two years he was in charge of the choir at West London Synagogue’s overflow service, a choir that has been described as the “Purest Church Choir within the Anglo-Jewish Community”!

From 1974 until he retired in 1994, he held the post of Director of Music at the Hampstead School where his symphony orchestras, wind bands and in particular his girls choirs, were regularly selected to perform at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the National Festival of Youth and Music.

He has composed a great deal of music, including pieces for school orchestras, choirs and chamber groups, a dozen musicals for school and youth productions, about two hundred choral arrangements and compositions, and countless pieces of liturgical music for the synagogue service. Recently he has composed a number of pieces based on traditional Jewish and Hassidic ideas for string quartet, which have been used as part of the wedding ceremony.

Copyright & copy; All rights reserved 2012, Zemel Choir is a Registered Charity No. 252572/ACL. Patrons: Steven Isserlis CBE, Jeremy Menuhin, Malcolm Singer. The Zemel Choir, established by Dudley Cohen in 1955, is proud of its international reputation as one of the world's finest mixed-voice Jewish choirs. Our wide-ranging repertoire embraces all the traditional Jewish cultures, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Yiddish and Israeli. We regularly perform in major venues throughout the U.K. and overseas, and, besides singing well-known favourites, are particularly proud to present new music, often specially commissioned, from contemporary composers. Recent highlights have included the Choir’s Golden Anniversary, celebrated in November 2005 with a concert at St John's, Smith Square, and also our Celebrate with Song event, which aims to raise the profile of Jewish choral music through workshops and performances. This took place at St John’s between 2007 and 2009, and at JFS in 2010 and 2011. In recent years we have also performed at London venues including the South Bank Centre and V&A museum. TV and Radio appearances have included the 1986 live television and radio broadcast of Kaddish for Terezin from Canterbury Cathedral, the Expressions of Reconciliation and Hope service in York Minster in 1990, a Holocaust Day commemoration edition of Radio 4's Sunday Worship in January 2001, and most recently, in January 2005, an edition of BBC1's Songs of Praise, The Holocaust Remembered. We have travelled extensively to the U.S.A., Canada, Israel, and Eastern and Western Europe, and in 1993 participated in the Polish Holocaust Memorial ceremonies in Warsaw and Treblinka to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. At the 1996 Zimriyah Choral Festival in Jerusalem we were invited to sing at the opening ceremony concert, which was broadcast live on Israel Radio, and In October 2001 we toured The Czech Republic and Hungary. In April 2007 we toured Belgium, France and Luxembourg, and in March 2009 we made another successful and enjoyable tour of Israel. In 2011 we were invited by the Mayor of London to take part in London's Holocaust Memorial Ceremony, and shortly afterwards we gave concerts in Paris and Strasbourg. In December 2011 we attended the Lewandowski Festival in Berlin where we performed with seven other Jewish choirs in a Grand concert, and on our own in a Lutheran Church that was designed with extensive Nazi symbolism Over the years we have made many recordings, the most recent of which is our newly completed CD - Celebrate With Song - conducted by Benjamin Wolf.