This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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The Schmooze These Breslov Tunes Were Saved by Rock ‘n’ Roll
My musically sophisticated Orthodox friends often tell me that they are not interested in Jewish music. It’s not hard to see why. If you take the material produced by the Orthodox pop industry, it’s often just the frum equivalent of Justin Timberlake, or over-produced boys choirs backed up by obnoxious electronics and phony string arrangements….
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The Schmooze The Belated Triumph of a Proto-Feminist Opera
“That was simply amazing!” a normally jaded music executive exclaimed to me after the second act of Franz Schreker’s provocative “Der Ferne Klang” (“The Distant Sound”). Hounded to death as a “degenerate” composer by the rising Nazis, Schreker’s defiantly louche, wildly successful 1909 opera disappeared and had to wait a century for its first American…
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The Schmooze This Klezmer Kills Fascists
“The politics these days are the worst I’ve ever seen,” lamented Robert Kaplan of the Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring. He was introducing The Klezmatics before they hit the stage at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park Bandshell on August 3 for the second show in the Music For a Better World series, which culminates on August 15 with…
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The Schmooze Fusing Indian and Jewish Worship With the ‘Kirtan Rabbi’
Kirtan, a Sanskrit call-and-response form of worship from India, and Rabbi, are two words not often found in the same sentence. Rabbi Andrew Hahn, better known as the “Kirtan Rabbi,” is on track to change that. Hahn’s spiritual innovation was on display at the Jewish Heritage Museum in New York’s Battery Park last week, as…
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The Schmooze Why Will Gorillaz Play in Syria, But Not in Israel?
Earlier this spring Gorillaz, a British “virtual” rock sensation headed by Blur front-man Damon Albarn, canceled a show at Tel Aviv’s Pic.nic festival, along with British dance punk outfit Klaxons and American alt-rock pioneers The Pixies. Albarn never explicitly stated the reason for the cancellation, but it was widely speculated that the decision was linked…
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The Schmooze A ‘Degenerate’ Composer at Bard
Franz Schreker, an Austrian composer of Jewish descent who was hounded to an untimely death by the Nazis, has long been considered an unjustly forgotten genius. In recent years, however, Schreker’s works have received some long-overdue attention. In 2005 American music director Kent Nagano conducted a darkly impressive revival of Schreker’s 1918 opera “The Marked…
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The Schmooze Radical Jewish Culture Behind Glass
The Jewish museum (Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme) in Paris greets its visitors with massive tombstones dating back to 11th century. There are also frail parchments, medieval megillot, newspaper clips of the Dreyfus trial, and dim brass ritual objects. Imagine then, the shock and delight inspired by the exhibit that landed there this spring,…
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The Schmooze Are You Listening Now?: Charming Hostess’s ‘The Bowls Project’
There’s something special about enjoying a brilliant album alone, but there’s joy in sharing it with others. Since 2001, when Jewlia Eisenberg released “Trilectic,” I have had the former joy, but not the latter. “Trilectic” was a brilliant concept album that set the writings of Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis to eclectic vocal compositions that…
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