Alexander Gelfand
By Alexander Gelfand
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Culture Setting Celan To Music
The distinguished literary critic George Steiner once described the Romanian Jewish poet Paul Celan as “almost certainly the major European poet of the period after 1945.” That pronouncement has been repeated often over the past decade, as Celan’s poetry has come to greater attention in the United States through a fresh clutch of translations from…
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Culture Whither Klezmer?
Every generation of artists faces its own peculiar set of challenges. When the first klezmer revivalists began breathing fresh life into Jewish music in the early 1970s, their task was not a simple one. They had few role models, their audience was undeveloped and many were in the position of having to learn theira instruments…
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Culture She’s Still Got the Beat
When it comes to assessing the lives and careers of older female musicians, certain ready-made narratives spring to mind. There’s the promising career cut short by sexual discrimination. The veteran performer who never gets her due. And the lucky outlier who makes it to the top of the heap despite impossible odds. We want to…
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Culture Singer, Sung
Years ago, the director of the Hebrew school where I briefly taught in Portland, Ore., offered to introduce me to a composer she knew at Reed College. For a variety of reasons — most having to do with sloth and misanthropy — I never pursued the connection. I’ve regretted it ever since. The guy my…
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Culture A Perfect Pairing Of Worker and Work
Duke Ellington once said that there are only two kinds of music: good music, and the other kind. It follows that the good stuff ought to come in a variety of forms. To name but a few: There’s the stuff that lives on the page, crafted by a particularly inspired composer; there’s the stuff that…
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Books Writing the Book on Klezmer
In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I’m personally indebted to Yale Strom. I keep a hardcover copy of his reference work “The Book of Klezmer: The History, the Music, the Folklore” (Chicago Review Press, 2002) on the bookshelf that rings the ceiling in my apartment. Whenever I need to check a…
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News Culinary Adventures
It’s 6 p.m. on a Saturday night and Larry Lighter is describing the gradual evolution of the menu at Moishe’s, the Montreal steakhouse that his father, Moishe Lighter, founded in 1938. Lighter calls my attention to the framed menus that hang above the overstuffed leather banquettes in the coat-check area. Back in the 1940s, Moishe’s…
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Culture Lyrics Sparkle in Yiddish ‘Pirates of Penzance’
Poetry, Robert Frost wrote, is what gets lost in translation. Or not, as the case may be. Witness the work of Al Grand, the man behind the Yiddish version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance,” which was presented recently by the National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene. Grand’s “Di Yam Gazlonim!” which ran until November 12…
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