Benjamin Ivry is a frequent Forward contributor.
Benjamin Ivry
By Benjamin Ivry
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Culture What’s in a Name? Russian Jewish Composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg
A November 22nd recital by the noted Latvian-born cellist Yosif Feigelson at New York’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue is a welcome opportunity to experience the sinuously graceful and dramatic cello music of the Russian composer of Polish-Jewish origin, Mieczyslaw Weinberg. I once asked Weinberg’s colleague, the Russian Jewish conductor Rudolf Barshai, if the composer’s Judaism…
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Culture The Amazing Jew: Salsa Legend Larry Harlow
Jews are drawn to Latin music, much as they are to Chinese food, by a combination of sensual pleasure and the liberation which comes from exoticism. Such is the conclusion to be drawn from the stellar career of salsa music performer and composer Larry Harlow (born Lawrence Ira Kahn in Brooklyn in 1939), who earned…
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News Man of the Hour
Once underestimated in favor of his more acclaimed artist friends, like Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia, Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia in 1890) is now finally the man of the hour, honored with two major exhibits: Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention, which runs from November 15 to March 14, 2010, at…
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Culture A Salute to Jewish Theater Producer Joseph Papp
The Brooklyn-born Jewish theatrical producer and director Joseph Papp (born Joseph Papirofsky) died of prostate cancer almost exactly eighteen years ago, and has never been more missed, as “Free for All: Joe Papp, The Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told,” a new oral history from Doubleday Publishers, proves. The value of the book,…
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Culture A Bauhausful of Antisemites
The 90th anniversary of the founding of Bauhaus movement in 1919 has led to a flurry of museum exhibits across Europe and a Berlin exhibit that is now at New York’s MoMA. The progressive Bauhaus artists, architects, and designers, led by German architect Walter Adolph Georg Gropius were shut down by the Nazis in 1933,…
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Culture Ignaz Friedman: Great Jewish Pianist
The Polish Jewish pianist Ignaz Friedman may not be a household name, but his majestic artistry, honored by a brilliantly researched new biography by Allan Evans, “Ignaz Friedman: Romantic Master Pianist,” just published by Indiana University Press, makes him of urgent interest to anyone who loves piano music. A Naxos CD reissue series, establishes Friedman…
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Culture Finian’s Rainbow
The welcome Broadway revival of Burton Lane (born Burton Levy in 1912) and E. Y. Harburg’s 1947 musical “Finian’s Rainbow,” opening October 29 at the St. James Theatre offers a fresh opportunity to relish its wish-fulfillment overturning of racism and economic inequalities in the mythical American state of Missitucky, when the “Idle Poor Become the…
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Culture A Modern Esther Returns
After a year spent dark while renovating what is now the David H. Koch Theater, the New York City Opera has chosen to revive one of the most powerful American Jewish operas for its first full production of the season. On November 7, Hugo Weisgall’s “Esther,” which premiered in 1993 to nearly universal acclaim, will…
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