Beyoncé and Jay-Z, the first couple of pop music, kick off their second co-headlining stadium tour — dubbed the On the Run II Tour — on June 6 in Cardiff, Wales (home to about two in five Jews in Wales, or about 800 total). The tour will run through Europe for a month and a…
In 1993, John Zorn began composing music based on Jewish themes for a new group, Masada Quartet. Now, 25 years and 613 tunes later, Zorn is closing the book — literally and figuratively — on what evolved into a sprawling, genre-defying series of hundreds of compositions written for dozens of different ensembles, all united by…
Without the support of one Jewish sixth-grade teacher in Brooklyn, Shawn Carter might never have become Jay-Z. During a conversation with David Letterman on the former “Late Show” host’s new show, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction,” the rapper and entrepreneur discussed how his former teacher, Renee Rosenblum-Lowden, played a critical role in fomenting his…
As part of the roster of celebrations planned in honor of the 70th anniversary of the founding of Israel, Jerusalem will in April play host to a concert of music written directly before and during the Holocaust. The concert by Israel’s Ashod Symphony Orchestra will mark the first time that several of those works will…
Michael Landers, a former national table tennis champion who competed in 2013’s Maccabiah Games, is set to appear in his New York Philharmonic debut on February 20, in Andy Akiho’s concerto “Ricochet.” While the New York Times reports that Landers has perfect pitch and a fondness for bassoon, it his table tennis prowess that will…
There are different levels at which one can love Leonard Bernstein. There’s knowing all the lyrics to “Somewhere”; there’s devotion to his lesser-known works, like, say, the “Chichester Psalms”; then there’s throwing a two-year global festival in honor of the centennial of his birth. While that centennial doesn’t arrive until August 25, the festivities already…
At a concert hall in southeastern Ukraine, Svetlana Balabukha, 70, says she can remember when she first heard Vladimir Vysotsky. She was 18, a schoolgirl in Donetsk, a town in now-occupied eastern Ukraine. “First of all — what style, what a way of performing!” she says, then smiles and leans a bit closer. “And second…what…
There are certain things in this life that I pretty much take for granted: Snow will fall in December. A new baseball season will begin in April. And if he’s not already touring somewhere as we speak, Neil Diamond will be going on tour again soon. Which is why the announcement that the multi-platinum-selling singer-songwriter…
I first started digging for old records in thrift stores in the late 1980s, back when you could still score stacks of 45s from the glory days of AM radio at 5 or 10 cents a pop. In the course of each thrift store foray, I would almost inevitably come across a single or two…
Maybe you find yourself quietly humming along to Christmas songs, not wanting to attract attention to yourself out of a sense of embarrassment or guilt. Maybe you find yourself at this time of year overwhelmed or oppressed by the onslaught of overplayed Christmas ditties pretending to be “holiday songs.” Maybe you secretly love Christmas songs…
By now, the question is familiar: How should those who distribute and consume art deal with the artistic legacy of someone accused of sexual harassment and assault? And next: How should that calculation change if that person created their art through collaboration with others, who are presumably innocent of their colleague’s alleged crimes? That question…
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