This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
The Latest
-
The Schmooze A Concerto and Chance Meeting for the Ages
It’s always surprising how often Jews cross borders. But this coincidence was just too good not to be documented. In January I was raving to my friend Beate Sirota Gordon about a performance of the famously gigantic, wild and strange Ferruccio Busoni Piano Concerto I’d just heard for the first time, performed by Leon Botstein…
-
The Schmooze At 32, Regina Spektor Is Better Than Ever
“Today we’re younger than we ever gonna be,” Regina Spektor sings in the balladic “Small Town Moon,” the first track on “What We Saw From The Cheap Seats,” her sixth solo album. It’s the kind of sappy phrase you might find written on one of those motivational posters that are taped to the walls of…
-
The Schmooze Q&A: Taylor Mac on Fabulous Tenement Songs
Since moving to Manhattan to launch his performing career 17 years ago, composer, playwright and actor Taylor Mac has graced stages from Sydney to Spoleto to San Francisco. But the Obie Award-winning artist has never been invited to perform uptown — until now. On May 24, at The JCC in Manhattan, Mac will premiere “Sleep…
-
The Schmooze Monday Music: The Face of Ladino Dream-Pop
Any artist working in “World Music” (likely the vaguest genre for which Billboard tracks sales) has to determine the role traditional sounds play in their compositions. They hang suspended between the present and the past; too much fealty to the canon and the recordings become academic exercises in evoking a world long gone. Update your…
-
The Schmooze Monday Music: Israeli Indie Scene Grows Up
Crossposted from Haaretz On Friday evening, in the children’s area of the Yaarot Menashe festival complex, you could hear a young mother calling her child, “Geva, come, the show is starting soon.” Since there aren’t many 5-year-olds named Geva, and because Geva is the name of one of the stars of the Israeli indie scene,…
-
The Schmooze Monday Music: Berlin Celebrates Amalia Beer
Amalia Beer was one of 19th-century Berlin’s preeminent salonieres. The Brothers Grimm and Humboldt, the poet Heinrich Heine and composer Felix Mendelssohn were all regular guests at her famous soirées. On May 6, this vanished world was briefly resurrected in the confines of the Berlin Philharmonic’s Chamber Music Hall with a program that combined music…
-
The Schmooze Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch Dies at 47
Adam Yauch, a member of the seminal hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died at age 47. Yauch, also known as MCA, had been treated for cancer since 2009. Brooklyn-born Yauch founded the Beastie Boys in 1979 with Mike “Mike D” Diamond and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horowitz. They achieved fame in 1986 with their first full-length…
-
The Schmooze Monday Music: Israeli-Arab Singer Mira Awad
Mira Awad — singer, songwriter and actress — is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, the first Arab to represent Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest, and the singer of a song called, hopefully, “There Must Be Another Way.” Awad, 37, was born in the same village where her father was born, in the Upper Galilee…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion I spoke out against Mamdani. Then he won. Here’s how we walk forward together.
- 2
News Indiana University removed its Jewish studies director. His replacement has ignited a firestorm over Israel.
- 3
Opinion Why a concert hall should be the last place for a protest — particularly an antisemitic one like this
- 4
Fast Forward Groundbreaking analysis of Hitler’s DNA shows no Jewish ancestry — but finds a genetic disorder
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish אַן אינטערוויו אויף ייִדיש מיט דער פֿילמאָגראַפֿקע פּערל גליקA chat in Yiddish with filmmaker Pearl Gluck
פּערל גליק, וואָס איז דערצויגן געוואָרן אין די חסידישע קרײַזן, וועט דערציילן ווי ייִדיש שפּילט אַ ראָלע אין אירע פֿילמען.
-
Opinion Settlers torched a West Bank mosque — and the milquetoast Israeli mainstream response won’t suffice
-
Culture This Jesus horror movie could have used more heresy
-
Film & TV Her parents fled Mexico and Mandatory Palestine, taking their traumas with them
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
