This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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The Schmooze Jazz Great — and Gone
Crossposted from Haaretz On Friday morning, the ninth-grade students in the jazz program at the Thelma Yellin High School for Arts were learning about the history of jazz with their beloved teacher, Amit Golan. That same day there was a test. The questions were about Duke Ellington, Art Tatum and other early jazz giants, whom…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Ruth Gerson’s Home Songs
Not many pop-rock artists are inspired by Franz Rosenzweig’s “Star of Redemption” or “Totality and Infinity” by Emmanuel Levinas, but then again, Ruth Gerson is not your usual singer-songwriter. “Most often, I start writing a song because of something I am reading,” Gerson said. Given her academic background (she studied Jewish existentialism at Princeton), she…
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The Schmooze A Rave Grows in Brooklyn
It is safe to wager that New York City has seen it all when an art rave fashion show spirals into an impromptu hora on an open, desolate warehouse block. These men’s dancing feet may have been inspired by a sudden spiritual impulse to be closer to God. But the sudden shakedown also could have…
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The Schmooze Moody Thoughts About Bob Dylan and Cher
What do Bob Dylan, Cher, and Rick Moody have in common? Stop thinking, “Well, Dylan and Cher both did projects with the word “burlesque” in them…” Here’s the answer: Once upon a time William G. Scheele, who was the equipment/stage manager for The Band and Bob Dylan from 1969 to 1976 and a photographer whose…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: War and Exile in Washington
“Black woods howl in the stove/Our dog turned into a lion/but today the grownups are/Frowning like a mean witch.” So go the lyrics to Karel Berman’s song “Children at Play” from his 1944 work “Poupata” (Buds), sung by Canadian bass Robert Pomakov. Berman’s lyrics convey a naïve perspective but were composed for a bass on…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Josh Waletzky’s Yiddish Song
On the Yiddish Song of the Week blog, Pete Rushefsky writes about Josh Waletzky and “Yaninke,” a song Josh learned from his father, Sholom Waletzky: One of the leading contemporary composers of Yiddish song, Josh Waletzky (b. 1948) grew up in a family that was deeply embedded in the secular Yiddish world of Camp Boiberik…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: David Amram at 80
“There isn’t an after party because I know pretty much everyone here,” composer David Amram announced at the end of his 80th birthday celebration at Symphony Space on November 11. “I figured that with 500 of you, plus your dates, plus the 60-piece orchestra, the rest of the performers and our families, we’d need Madison…
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The Schmooze Blending by Intuition
Crossposted from Haaretz Singing was a necessity and inevitability for Claudia Nurit Henig. Born in Argentina, her mother tongue is Ladino, a language that seems to encompass infinite musical riches. Even the transition as a child from Buenos Aires to Arad, after losing her parents one after the next, did not dull Henig’s passion for…
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