This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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The Schmooze Joined by Oud
Crossposted from Haaretz The closing performance of the Jerusalem Oud Festival, starring the singer Aynur Dogan, exemplified the festival’s beauty and necessity. Even in times when the word “flotilla” brought to mind pleasant connotations, Israeli music lovers did not have many opportunities to enjoy a leading Turkish singer. In recent times, marked by Israeli-Turkish hostility,…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Haredi Hip-Hop Rocks Tel Aviv
Crossposted from Haaretz The mostly secular crowed at Mike’s Place in Tel Aviv had a religious experience last week when the five-piece Haredi Hip Hop band Shtar took to the stage, traditional wardrobe intact. It wasn’t long before the crowed began to sway to the rhythm of rapper Ori M’Ori’s tassels, as he hammered out…
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Music Israel’s Gender Wars: A Week of Changes
It was small, low-key and the participants numbered in the hundreds, not the thousands. But a crowd of Israeli women took to the streets to speak out — or, more accurately, sing out — against the continuing attacks by religious extremists on women’s right to be seen and heard freely in the public square. The…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Down Home Brooklyn
Photo courtesy of Andy Statman The version of “The Lord Will Provide” on “Old Brooklyn,” Andy Statman’s virtuosic two-CD excursion through all manners of American and Jewish music, struck me as unusual, and not just because the voice and clarinet duet is spine-tinglingly powerful. It’s more because the 18th-century hymn, written by James Newton —…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Moshe Hecht’s Spiritual Pop
The song titles tell you a lot about this album: “Master Of The World”; “The Soul”; “Father in Heaven.” Even Moshe Hecht’s last name suggests Orthodoxy. But the sounds of his first album, “Heart Is Alive,” are surprisingly diverse. While the lyrics of Hecht’s compositions come from a devout mindset, the sonic colors are those…
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The Schmooze Band From the North Country
Crossposted from Haaretz The Louisa band is still not so well known in Tel Aviv, but in the north of the country the rock band that Idan Talmud and Itay Sacharof formed has drawn a devoted audience for more than a year, despite their cautious abstention from too much publicity and exaggerated digital hype on…
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The Schmooze Composer Brings Jazz Age to Washington Ballet
Elizabeth Gaither and Jared Nelson in ‘The Great Gatsby.’ Photo by Steve Vaccariello. F. Scott Fitzgerald — who dubbed the 1920s “the Jazz Age” — would surely approve. This week, jazz clarinetist and composer Billy Novick and his band, the Blue Syncopators, will play Novick’s score for The Washington Ballet’s production of “The Great Gatsby”…
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The Schmooze Preserving Indie Moments
Crossposted from Haaretz At the site of the festival there were billboards proclaiming “Indiemoment,” urging the thousands present to photograph what they were doing and what was going on around them at the same exact, predetermined times: 3:53 a.m. and 3:53 p.m. After the In-D-Negev Festival 2011 last week, the photos were sent to a…
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