"Using special electronic filter technology, I was able to cut through the many layers of decay and recover the glorious sounds from 12 of the records. What I heard were people singing and talking, mostly in Yiddish," he said.

He then combined the recordings with a modern composition, to create the seven-minute piece named "Andarta," Hebrew for "memorial."

Horenstein first presented the piece before Jewish educators participating in the Eighth Jerusalem Fellows Colloquium in Jerusalem earlier this year. He plans to release it this spring as part of a retrospective CD of his life's work.