Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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The Schmooze Cantorial Concert a First for Barclays Center
Who knew the man behind the Brooklyn homecomings of Jay-Z and Barbra Streisand had a thing for heimishe melodies? Bruce Ratner, the developer and majority owner of the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn, which opened last September with a Jay-Z show and hosted borough native Barbra Streisand a month later, holds a special place in…
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Israel News Harlem’s Good Ol’ Days
Video: Nate Lavey Just south of the bustle of Harlem’s famed 125th Street corridor, a mix of brownstones and churches in Harlem’s Mount Morris Park neighborhood prospers today as home to a large working-class black population. But walk down these streets with John T. Reddick, and he will show you the remnants, still-visible, of the…
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The Schmooze Yo La Tengo’s New Groove
The fuzzed out dulcet tones of Yo La Tengo ring out on “Fade,” the band’s 13th studio album in a long and storied career that stretches nearly 30 years. Proudly hailing from Hoboken, New Jersey, the trio is composed of guitarist Ira Kaplan, his wife and drummer Georgia Hubley, and bassist James McNew, all of…
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The Schmooze Setting ‘Yellow Ticket’ to Music
Klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals has experience scoring documentary and feature films. But earlier this year she faced an unusual challenge when she was approached by the Washington Jewish Music Festival to score a 1918 feature-length silent film called “The Yellow Ticket.” Unlike other scoring jobs, where her focus was mainly on heightening viewers’ experience of…
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The Schmooze Forward Fives: 2012 in Music
In the annual Forward Fives selection we celebrate the year’s cultural output with a series of deliberately eclectic choices in music, performance, exhibitions, books and film. Here we present five of our favorite Jewish music releases of 2012. Feel free to argue with and add to our selections in the comments. Sarah Aroeste, “Gracia” The…
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Breaking News Ravi Shankar Dies at 92
Indian musician and composer Ravi Shankar, who helped introduce the sitar to the Western world through his collaborations with The Beatles, died in Southern California on Tuesday, his family said. He was 92. Shankar, a three-time Grammy winner with legendary appearances at the 1967 Monterey Festival and at Woodstock, had been in fragile health for…
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Culture Deck The Halls With Boughs of Challah
A Jewish music preservation group sets out to make the definitive Hanukkah compilation and ends up with an album dripping with Christmas cheer. That’s not just a humdrum holiday punch line — it’s also an accurate description of the genesis of the Idelsohn Society’s December release, “‘Twas the Night Before Hanukkah: The Musical Battle Between…
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The Schmooze Guitar Pedals and Goat Strings
Shanir Blumenkranz’s extensive contribution to the world of radical Jewish music can only be compared to Robbie Shakespeare’s formative influence on reggae. Blumenkranz plays on numerous projects issued by the Tzadik label — so many of them, in fact, that his recognizable style of bass playing is virtually inseparable from the sound has come to…
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