Both were riding to stardom in their day — Avi with his piano and flute, and Barak with his electric guitar — when they turned their lives around and found Torah and chassidus.

Photos: Itzik Blenitsky

While Avi Piamenta’s famous flute has been a conduit of chassidic niggunim for decades, he was surprised to learn that it was also a catalyst for bringing hard-rock Tel Aviv guitarist Barak Grossberg to teshuvah. They are a generation apart, not only by age, but by culture as well — Avi Piamenta has settled in Kfar Chabad, while Barak, who you may not have heard of if you’re not into the genre, has sanctified his heavy-metal style while making himself a religious cocoon in the heart of Tel Aviv. Yet these two musicians, today both of them Chabad chassidim, share an intertwined journey, and more.

Despite the decades between them — Avi Piamenta is in his sixties and Barak Grossberg is 29 — there’s a common narrative: Both of them were at the top of their professions when teshuvah crept into their souls, and both had to recalibrate. And so, we brought them together to share the common notes of their music and their journey through an often unforgiving industry.

For Avi, who lives in Kfar Chabad today, the fame, ensuing spiritual odyssey, and more redirected fame, was intimately tied to his brother — master guitarist Yosi Piamenta a”h, who passed away in 2015 at the relatively young age of 63. It was Yosi who, in the course of his career, created the band’s eventual signature style — rock-influenced chassidic and Israeli music with a warm, happy, and friendly message.

“Our uncle Albert Piamenta was an Israeli saxophonist who became famous for mixing Judeo-Arabic music with jazz,” Avi says. “And my mother loved music so much that the first piece of furniture she bought when we moved to Tel Aviv was a piano.”

Avi’s father was a Shin Bet agent, and for a time, the family lived on the Tzrifin military base. When the family later moved to Tel Aviv, Avi attended Hakfar Hayarok, a six-year middle school and high school that began as a socialist youth village. Avi grew up playing piano but eventually, he says, “I discovered the magical sound of the flute and that became my instrument of choice.” Music was the dominating force in his life, and when he was 17, he started performing with his brother Yosi, who’d already made a name for himself in the competitive circle of professional guitarists. Yosi was a soldier playing in the IDF band then, just as the 1973 Yom Kippur War broke out, and the brothers played for the troops on the front.

A year later, they formed the Piamenta Band and soon became crowd favorites on the secular entertainment scene, both in Israel and abroad. “Even then,” says Avi, “before we became close to the path of Torah, we still played songs like ‘Mitzvah Goreret Mitzvah’ and other songs with Jewish traditional phrases that we were familiar with. It just seemed natural to include them in our playlist. Perhaps it was in the zechut of our grandfather Avraham, who worked hard to imbue us with some tradition, even though we were pretty far from Yiddishkeit growing up.”

In 1976, the brothers got their big break when famed American saxophonist Stan Getz came to Israel as part of a European tour. He was so excited when he discovered the Piamenta brothers that he canceled all his upcoming European events and stayed in Israel to record an album with them.

Meanwhile, the Piamenta brothers became connected with music producer Shaul Grossberg, Barak’s father. At the time — “long before you were born,” he tells Barak — Grossberg was a legend in the industry, involved with the biggest names in Israeli rock of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

“He was the champion of the Israeli music world,” Avi Piamenta relates. “He could tell you every single detail about every existing group and had recordings of every artist, even those who nobody heard of. At the time, he opened a nightclub and booked us to play.”

Avi admits that they were still pretty far from Yiddishkeit, playing in Grossberg’s club with some of the most radical artists of the time, although he notes happily that “many of them became chozrim b’teshuvah later on. But then, all of us were still pretty far away.”

In 1978, for the 30th anniversary celebrations of the State of Israel, the Israeli government sent the brothers to perform at sponsored events throughout the US and Canada. Around that time, Avi had become Torah-observant, and was soon exposed to the teachings of Chabad chassidus. He decided to stay in New York to learn Torah, and even formed an informal yeshivah with other musicians. Yosi also became more religious, and eventually the whole family moved to Crown Heights.

“This was the beginning of the great change in our music,” Avi says. “We rebranded ourselves, learned the language of the chassidic niggun, and began including chassidic songs in our repertoire, developing our own unique style. At that point we wrote to the Lubavitcher Rebbe asking if we were on the right track, bringing estranged Jews back to Judaism through music and he encouraged us, giving us specific instructions in how to inspire and yet make sure there are moral fences in anindustry that has no restrictions at all.