In the early 1990s, following the fall of communism and the birth of the Czech Republic, Cantor Charles Davidson’s musical number, “I Never Saw Another Butterfly,” was performed at the former site of the Terezin ghetto.

Davidson’s piece was based on poetry written by children who were prisoners of the Nazis in the ghetto. He wrote it in the late 1960s, and it’s been performed thousands of times since.

But on this day, it was played for about 150 Terezin survivors on the 50th anniversary of the creation of the ghetto. New Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel was also in attendance.

“A trip I have long remembered,” the cantor said.

It remains the highlight of a cantorial journey filled with them. Davidson, 94, is the hazzan emeritus at Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Elkins Park, where he served for 30 years, according to his daughter, Miriam Davidson. He also taught at the H.L. Miller Cantorial School in New York City for 27 years.

Now, the cantor will be honored with a tribute concert at First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia on June 4. Three local choirs, the ANNA Crusis Feminist Choir, the Nashirah Jewish Chorale of Philadelphia and Zachor Keneseth Israel Youth Chorale, will perform “I Never Saw Another Butterfly.” Tickets, which range from $10 to $45 depending on your ability to pay, are at annacrusis.org.

Davidson’s daughters, Miriam, the director of the ANNA Crusis Feminist Choir, and Alyssa Davidson, leader of the Zachor Keneseth Israel Youth Chorale, organized the concert. Both women, as well as their brother Michael Davidson, a musician and artist, and their sister Ilana Davidson, a cantor in New York, followed their father into the music field.

“I think Dad’s commitment to community and to bringing people together is something that he instilled in all of us,” Miriam Davidson said. “I feel like the way that I move through my musical life really centers around bringing people together.”

As they planned the tribute concert, the cantor’s daughters asked him to write a reflection on his career. In it, he wrote: “Regarding my feelings about the piece, if I had not written anything other than ‘Butterfly,’ I would be content.” He repeated that sentiment in an interview.

“I would be very happy to be known only as the composer of ‘Butterfly.’ It’s very important to me, and I feel that that’s what I’ve been here for,” he said. “I feel that I represent children. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary that I did. But it had more meaning to me than anything else.”

Davidson’s journey with the song began in 1966, as he explained in his reflection. His friend, Cantor Solomon Mendelson, called to tell him about a “recently published book of poems by children who had been imprisoned” in Terezin in Czechoslovakia. The children “subsequently had been murdered by the Nazis.”

“When I read the poems, I knew that I had to try to set them musically,” the cantor wrote.

It took him two years. With a normal song, his process might take a day. But with “Butterfly,” Davidson had to make sure that he was getting the piece right. The poems were bright and optimistic despite the situation. The cantor had to try to keep that feeling alive, even though he knew how the story ended. One was about a little boy who wandered down a path and saw a rosebud.

Davidson finished the piece and published it. In the ensuing years and decades, it was performed more than 4,000 times at synagogues, churches and other locations in the Philadelphia area and beyond.

“The music has had a good journey so far,” Davidson wrote.

On that trip to Terezin about three decades ago, the cantor rode in a bus with the choir kids who performed the song that day. They traveled through the countryside and continued through the gates of the town. It was the same journey that the kids who had composed the poems had taken a half-century earlier.

As the choir kids rehearsed on stage on a cold, rainy October day, a butterfly flew over the stage.

jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com