Gideon Zelermyer has served as cantor of Congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Montreal since 2004 — a congregation founded in 1846 that has kept a professional choir since 1887 and remains one of the few in the world whose services are led each week by cantor and male choir.

A lyric tenor admired for the warmth and purity of his line, he trained for the opera house and the synagogue alike, studying voice at The George Washington University with Dr. Robert Baker and cantorial art at the Tel Aviv Cantorial Institute under Naftali Herstik, Chief Cantor of the Jerusalem Great Synagogue. His cantorial singing is deeply influenced by his love and deep knowledge of opera, which he has shared since 2020 in his online series A Night @ the Opera.

He was cantorial soloist on Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker, which received the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance and the 2017 JUNO Award for Album of the Year.

His recordings include the Music of Congregation Shaar Hashomayim series and two contemporary classical albums, recently Art Choral Vol. 10: Hallelujah with Ensemble ArtChoral. He has conceived and presented ten large-scale Shaar Hashomayim concert productions, sung three world premieres, and appeared with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal under Kent Nagano and at the United Nations General Assembly. He has lectured at Harvard Divinity School, UCLA, Queen’s, Rochester and McGill.

He sings the national anthems for the Montreal Canadiens at the Bell Centre and the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.