This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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The Schmooze Chicago Concert Brings Interfaith Music Together
“This sanctuary is the most religiously diverse place in this great city,” said Michael Siegel, the rabbi of Anshe Emet, a Conservative synagogue in Chicago. If that sounds like crowing, consider that conspicuous among the attendees of the synagogue’s April 6 “Sounds of Faith” concert were kippas, Greek Orthodox vestments, and headscarves. The program, which…
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The Schmooze Podcast: The Best Hasidic Composer in Brooklyn
Over the past 200 years, the Modzitzer hasidim have become known for their beautiful melodies, or nigunim. Thousands of them, in fact. Today, 88 year-old Ben Zion Shenker is one of the most prolific, and respected, Modzitzer composers. For his latest album, “Hallel V’zimrah,” he teamed up with klezmer and bluegrass virtuoso Andy Statman. The…
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Culture How the Son of German and Polish Jews Became the ‘Starchild’ of KISS
● Face The Music: A Life Exposed By Paul Stanley HarperOne, 480 pages, $28.99 I’ll admit that I was a little late to the KISS party. In the mid-1970s, while most of my elementary school friends were cranking “Destroyer” and ooh-ing and ah-ing over the photo booklets from “Alive!” and “Alive II,” I was gravitating…
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Life Throwback Thursday: Pianist Myra Hess
Forward Association Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives. Though acclaimed for her interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann, Myra Hess, born in 1890, achieved artistic heroine status for her deep and abiding faith that art and music must…
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The Schmooze Cracow Crescendo
Cracow Crescendo from Jewish Daily Forward on Vimeo. “We sing in Yiddish, we sing in Hebrew and sometimes we sing in Polish,” explains Zofia Radzikowska who joined the JCC choir in Cracow when it first opened two years ago. At the beginning it was uncertain whether the choir would be able to attract enough members….
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The Schmooze Enrico Macias, Sephardic Superstar
If you’ve grown up as a Sephardic Jew, there’s one singer that you’ve reliably heard at every single wedding, bar/bat-mitzvah, engagement party, Shabbat, or celebration of any kind. His name is Enrico Macias. Born Gaston Ghrenassia in Constantine — then in French Algeria — in 1938, the Jewish “Pied Noir” singer has come to embody…
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Music Marissa Nadler Isn’t Afraid of the Dark
Boston-based singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler, long a critical darling with a cult following, seems poised to cross over with the haunting “July,” (Sacred Bones) her sixth studio album in ten years. Reviews have been the strongest of her career; UK pop bible NME called “July” “a career high,” and the PopMatters blog dubbed it “one of…
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Culture Why Jews Stood Up for Richard Wagner
There’s an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in which Larry David is caught whistling Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll” to his wife in front of a movie theater. A hysterical and unhinged nudnik accosts him, spouting the common litany of charges against Wagner (“history’s biggest anti-Semite,” “millions of Jews marched to the gas chambers with Wagner’s music…
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Yiddish ווידעאָ: אַטקיאָר מײַק בורשטין שמועסט אויף ייִדיש בעת אַן איראַקער סעודה VIDEO: Actor Mike Burstyn chats in Yiddish during an Iraqi feast
ער און פּערלאַ קאַרני פֿאַרזוכן געשמאַקע פּאָטראַוועס, וואָס זענען גאָר אַנדערש פֿון דער אַשכּנזישער קיך
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