‘I’m a mother of four children,” Ute Lemper was saying, fingers toying with the handle of her coffee cup, “and singing these songs, telling these terrible destinies and tales of death, is almost impossible.” Lemper sat across from me at Nice Matin, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The lunchtime conversations surrounding us hummed with an…
Jewish roots are emerging in contemporary music from remarkably diverse performers who are often not Jewish. Beyond the intriguing klezmer revival, there’s a steadily growing movement of typically classically trained musicians who are discovering mostly European Jewish music as a base for alchemical combinations of past and present. When classical guitarist Denis Azabagic, originally from…
“Shuffle Along, Or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921,” the Broadway show starring Audra McDonald, opened on April 28. Its book by George C. Wolfe purports to explain how the African-American songwriter Eubie Blake encountered difficulties along the way to producing a show, “Shuffle Along,” nearly a century ago. One of the key…
April 22 marks the centenary of violinist Yehudi Menuhin (born Yehudi Mnuchin in New York). After 12-year-old Yehudi Menuhin played three concertos in Berlin, Albert Einstein famously exclaimed: “Now I know there is a God.” Menuhin later demurred that Einstein, as an “exalted Romantic man,” might have said the same thing about a worm or…
We get older when those we love — first parents, then peers and friends — pass away. Death becomes real, not an abstraction. Not only can it happen anytime; it does happen anytime. I think that’s true when celebrities pass also. This year, Prince and David Bowie; not long ago, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston….
Critics aren’t liable for the headlines the copy desk gives to reviews, so no point chiding The New York Times’s James Oestreich for the burdened praise pinned on a rising Israeli pianist’s recent New York recital: “Inon Barnatan Soldiers Through Hallowed Works.” I winced, because the review itself described a “fascinating and rewarding” evening of…
If for nothing else, Genyusha Zelkowitz aka Genya “Goldie” Ravan should be known for her hits recorded under the name Goldie and the Gingerbreads in the early 1960s. The group was the first all-female band signed to a major label – anticipating by over a decade bands like the Runaways and later on the entire…
‘I really like Ezra Furman. I think the guy’s got something. He’s got a lot of wit and nerve.” That wasn’t a stray Facebook comment or online review. It was punk godfather Iggy Pop raving over newly minted indie-rock royalty on a BBC Music broadcast last month. The object of Pop’s adoration is a bisexual,…
Ziv Yehezkel is a man full of contradictions. He is at once a deeply religious Jewish man, but also a zealous lover of Arabic music. The soloist of Arab Orchestra of Nazareth, the 31 year-old was born in Kiryat Ono, a town in central of Israel, in an area called “Little Baghdad.” But Yehezkel did…
The death of rock singer Glenn Frey, a cofounder and leader of the Eagles, marks an end to one of the longest running and most successful bands of the rock era. Critics have always noted the somewhat acerbic, downright cynical attitude running through many of the group’s best-known songs. But perhaps overlooked has been a…
During a week in which one can attend a revival of a Yiddish language musical from the golden era of Second Avenue (“The Golden Bride” by the National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage through January 3); or enjoy a critically acclaimed updated Broadway staging of “Fiddler on the Roof,” the musical that…
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