This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
The Latest
-
The Schmooze Wunderkind Composer Hits the Road
Electric energy pulses through the music of Tel Aviv-born pianist and composer Matan Porat. Earlier this year pianist David Greilsammer and the Israeli Chamber Project released recordings of his works, and he will tour North America this month and next spring with Musicians from Marlboro. He will be at the keyboard for György Ligeti’s 1982…
-
The Schmooze Handel, Egypt and the Jews
The sheer number of oratorios that George Frideric Handel wrote on Jewish subjects, including “Solomon,” “Esther,” “Joseph,” “Saul,” and “Judas Maccabeus,” has long led critics to suppose that he was a stout friend to the Children of Israel, and that London Jews were key patrons of his music. More recent scholarship suggests that Handel’s purported…
-
The Schmooze The Fresh Faces of Chamber Music
The photo of sweet-faced young people on the CD cover does not prepare you for the ferocity of the music making on “Opus 1” (Azica), the debut recording by the Israeli Chamber Project. Founded in 2008, the ICP as configured for Opus 1 comprises clarinetist Tibi Cziger, cellist Michal Korman, harpist Sivan Magen, pianist Assaff…
-
The Schmooze Gospel Trombone Choir for Atheist Jews
Even without its clever premise, Jacob Garchik’s latest album would still make for great listening. This is the sort of music that makes you stop in your tracks and mutter, “What is that?” It’s not every day that one hears a trombone choir — let alone one augmented with sousaphone and slide trumpet — playing…
-
Culture A Pop Quiz on Philip Glass
A touring production of Philip Glass’s monumental “Einstein on the Beach,” one of a great many tributes that kicked off this year in honor of the 75th birthday of the world’s most famous living composer, arrives this month at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Glass and his collaborator, avant-garde director and playwright Robert Wilson, called…
-
The Schmooze Fred Hersch Focuses at the Vanguard
Inside the Village Vanguard in Manhattan’s West Village, photographs of legendary jazz musicians line the dark-green walls. Stage left, above a portrait of a stolid John Coltrane, hangs a shot of the pianist Fred Hersch playing a song, his eyes closed, an intense yet peaceful aura about him. Hersch, 56, is relatively young to have…
-
The Schmooze In Folk Music, Sincerity Is Not Enough
“Thoughtless Sounds,” Max Jared’s debut Shemspeed release and the first on Shemspeed’s new folk imprint, Soul Snack Records, follows the blueprint for sentimental adult contemporary rock laid out by Jason Mraz and Jack Johnson: light accessible vocals, sensitive acoustic strumming and unobtrusive tunes. Like those other artists, Jared’s lyrical pallet assumes a sacred hippie slacker…
-
The Schmooze Reggae’s Jewish Connection
In 1997, writer, producer and performer Michael Goldwasser founded reggae collective Easy Star All-Stars, and has since then released half a dozen albums with names like “Dub Side of the Moon,” “Radiodread,” and “Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band.” Their latest album, a reggae-homage to Michael Jackson, “Thrillah,” slows down singles like “Beat It” and…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
News What We Know About Jeffrey Epstein’s Childhood
- 2
Fast Forward DNC finding: Biden’s Israel backing cost Harris votes for president
- 3
News An audiobook narrator told Zionists to kill themselves. A popular romance novelist hired him anyway.
- 4
Opinion The dark message behind Tucker Carlson’s attempt to drum up drama in Israel
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish טשיקאַוועסן: אַן אַמאָליקער „אסתּר־המלכּה פֿאַרמעסט“ אין אַן אַרגענטינער שטעטלTidbits: A Queen Esther beauty pageant long ago in an Argentinian shtetl
די ייִדן אין באַהיִאַ בלאַנקאַ פֿלעגן יעדעס יאָר אָרגאַניזירן אַ ספּעקטאַקלדיקן פּורים־באַל.
-
Books Why Walter Benjamin was all things to all people
-
Opinion Benjamin Disraeli once saved Britain’s monarchy — the current one may be beyond repair
-
Fast Forward Israeli bobsled squad is disqualified from Olympics after trying to swap in Druze teammate
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
