Nachum Nardi

Jewish composer and pianist, a.k.a. Nahum Nardi (born 1901 in Kiev, Russian Empire [now Ukraine] - died 1977 in Tel Aviv, Israel). Born Nahum Narodietzky to a religious family in Kiev, Nardi began studying piano at age 7. He graduated from the Kiev Conservatory in 1919, then successfully attended conservatories in Warsaw and Vienna. From 1922, he toured widely in Europe. In 1923, he emigrated to Palestine where he changed his last name to Nardi. On another tour to Europe in 1929, Nardi met Yemenite Jewish singer Bracha Zifira, who was studying in Berlin, Germany, at that time. Both began touring Europe together, got married, and had a daughter, Naama Nardi (1931-1989). In 1931, they toured Egypt, in 1936, they performed at the opening ceremony of the Palestine Broadcasting Service. At the invitation of Columbia, Nardi and Zifira made several recordings for that label and toured the United States in 1937. In 1939, however, the couple separated. After accompanying other Yemenite singers for a while, Nardi returned to performing and composing Classical concert music. In 1947 he represented Israel at the "World Congress of Music and Sound" in Paris. In 1949, when the U.S. television network NBC aired a show about his life and work of Nardi, he wrote a ballet suite, "Mapala Venitzahon," that was performed at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Later, Nardi founded a girl's choir and invited singer Ahuva Tsadok to sing in it. He and Tsadok married in 1955 and performed together both in Israel and the U.S., but their relationship also ended in divorce three years later. Nardi composed 1,111 songs, including around 300 children's songs. Eighty of these were based on lyrics by poet Hayim Nahman Bialik.