Shloyme Prizament

Shloyme Prizament (1889-1973) (also Shlomo or Szlojme Prizament or Szlomo Prizment), Jewish composer, actor in the Yiddish theater, and badkhn, son of Moyshe Prizament (a famous badchen known as "Moyshe Hibiner / Hibnever)."

Born in Uhanov (Hibinev) Galitsia (a town between Lemberg and Belz), Prizament moved to Lemberg (Lviv) as a child. When he was 16 his father died and he then supported the other 12 children in the family by becoming a badkhn himself, using his father's writings (scripts). Prizament wrote for Gershom Bader's Der yidisher folks-kalendar and began writing songs and instrumental music for Yiddish theatre.

He is known as a transitional figure since he also wrote for the last of the broder-zingers - Salcia Weinberg, Jule Glantz, Helena Geshpas and Pepi Litman (1874–1930), characterized as "a Jewish chanteuse in Hasidic trousers", for whom he wrote Lomir beyde davenen fun eyn makhzer (Let’s Both Pray from One Prayer Book). He later collected and arranged songs from other surviving Broder Singers. Bin ikh mir a klezmerl (I’m a Little Musician) was also written in that genre.

Prizament also acted, directed, and wrote plays and song, both music and lyrics. He began directing for Ber Hart's traveling troupe. Two of his famous operettas are Di blumen-kenign (The Flower Queen) and Di tsigaynerin (The Gypsy Girl).

He wrote music for operettas, his first being Joseph Lateiner's Khosn-Kale (Groom and Bride), a show which played in Kraków with Yidl Gutman and in New York with couplets by Sigmund Mogulesko and music by Louis Friedsell. His first acting role was in Jacob Mikhailovich Gordin's Yiddish King Lear and he stuck with acting, spending less time directing orchestras.

In 1910 he was made director of the Ukrainska Besida Theater but soon left again to travel Galitsia with wandering theater troupes, thence to Argentina where he wrote in Yidisher Soykher (Jewish Merchant) In 1912 he played as a comic and directed under Meltzer in Romania and worked with Zigmund Faynman in Gordin's repertory company. During the Romanian Bulgarian war foreigners were expelled from Romania; Prizament went back to Galitsia and traveled with the Glimer troupe and his brother, Jacob Prizament, until the outbreak of the first World War.

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