This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Wartime Songs for Gertrude Stein
There have been New York premieres of several noteworthy works recently, including major new violin concertos by Harrison Birtwhistle and James McMillan. But easily the most interesting was the grand finale of Lincoln Center’s Tully Scope Festival on March 18: Heiner Goebbels’s “Songs of Wars I Have Seen,” which uses passages from the remarkable book…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: A Simple Jew With a Touch of Gaga
Last month, the hugely popular Hasidic singer Lipa Schmeltzer, known simply as “Lipa,” released his latest album, “24/6,” a collection of cover songs currently popular at Hasidic weddings. The release comes almost exactly three years after the singer’s then-largest concert was banned by many prominent rabbis in the Haredi world, and it is only the…
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The Schmooze A Tenor for the People
Crossposted from Haaretz Without any fanfare or festivities, modestly and almost anonymously, Christoph Pregardien — one of the greatest lyric tenors of our time — landed in Israel a few days ago. It is hard to imagine a more impressive career than his: The greatest conductors conduct him, and he is hosted by the top…
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The Schmooze How the Violin Became the ‘Jewish National Instrument’
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Just the other night, amidst the glorious surroundings of the Music Room of The Phillips Collection, whose walls are bedecked with one masterpiece after another, over 100 people gathered together under the aegis of George Washington University’s Program in Judaic Studies to hear Professor James Loeffler of the University…
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The Schmooze Jack Gottlieb, Composer for the Synagogue and the World
Composer Jack Gottlieb, who passed away February 23 at the age of 80, was often asked to speak and write about Leonard Bernstein, the maestro whom he served in his youth as an assistant at the New York Philharmonic. But Gottlieb was one of the finest musicians around in his own right, and in a…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Klezmer That’s Coming and Going
Although they’ve had a number of earlier releases, “Where we come from… Where we’re going,” a challenging CD that is almost equal parts avant-garde jazz and klezmer music, was my introduction to Klezmokum, an Amsterdam-based band (Mokum is the old Jewish name for Amsterdam) led by Burton Greene, a pianist with a long history and…
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The Schmooze The Voice of Ladino
Ladino, the language of the Judeo-Spanish Diaspora, has unfairly languished behind Yiddish in the Jewish language popularity sweepstakes. With the release of her 2009 U.K. album “Sentir” in the United States and an accompanying tour, including upcoming shows in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, Israeli singer Yasmin Levy joins a bevy of artists…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: John Zorn Goes Beyond Collage With ‘Interzone’
In 2006, when the MacArthur Foundation bestowed its “Genius” award on John Zorn, the panel of judges only underscored what many fans already knew. Zorn’s extensive output as a composer of avant-garde music, a first-rate saxophone player, and a leader of a group of downtown New York musicians, has been vastly important and influential. His…
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