This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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The Schmooze Berlin Celebrates Louis Lewandowski Festival
This past weekend in Berlin, eight choirs from four continents took part in the first ever Louis Lewandowski Festival, named for the famed music director of Berlin’s New Synagogue in the late 19th century. The choristers hailed from Jerusalem to Johannesburg and Boston to Zürich, with detours to Strasbourg, Toronto and London. The headlining group…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: A John Zorn Christmas
The CD case to John Zorn’s first Christmas record, “A Dreamers Christmas,” comes as a sort of stocking. Reaching into the sleeve you’ll find, along with the CD, a sheet of stickers that could represent a new line of holiday-themed Giga Pets. You might be tempted to over-think this album, with its cute and somewhat…
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The Schmooze Forward Fives: 2011 in Music
In this, the third 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 the most important Jewish music releases of 2011. Feel free to argue with and add to our selections in the comments. “Songs…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: God Bless the Christmas Jews!
Bah humbug! This is a trying month for those of us with sensitive ears. Which is worse: the saccharine “holiday” drivel saturating the airwaves, or the ceaseless griping of those cheerless snobs who make a winter sport of proclaiming their distaste for the season’s musical offerings? It hardly takes a musical genius to wince at…
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The Schmooze Great American Songbook on Display
Wherever we go this time of year, we can’t escape hearing Christmas songs — be they on the radio, sung by carolers, or piped in as Muzak in stores and public spaces. It gets to the point at which it seems there is an audio loop of holiday classics running non-stop in our heads. What…
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The Schmooze In the Recording Studio with Itzhak Perlman
Photo by Mark Berney Itzhak spoke to Yitzchok in Hebrew. Hankus spoke to Yitzchok in Yiddish. The conductor made puns in English with a heavy Australian-South African accent. And this all happened in the recording studio where Bruce Springsteen recorded “Born to Run” and Madonna laid down her vocal tracks for “Like A Virgin.” We’re…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Songs for the Jewish Jet Set
A non-for-profit organization comprised of music-loving Jews, The Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation illuminates the forgotten corners of Jewish music in America. The Society is perhaps best known for “Jewface,” a collection of vaudeville-era minstrelrsy like “Cohen Owes Me 97 Dollars” — songs that strike present-day listeners as the Jewish version of Uncle Tomming. Other…
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The Schmooze An Unscripted Moment With Stephen Sondheim
Last night, as a performance of “An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin” drew to a close, one of those unscripted, magical moments on Broadway unfolded before an appreciative crowd at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. As the audience cheered wildly and applauded the veteran stars for their musical theater revue of songs from such…
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