This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
The Latest
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The Schmooze For Malian Musicians, ‘Simplicity is Freedom’
Eclecticism is a virtue too often touted by musicians and critics. Reviews and press releases formulaically repeat the cliché that “artist x blends elements of genre y with style z.” While this may be relevant to the archivists amongst us, such statements really say very little about the quality or authenticity of the music in…
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Music Sara Kamin: Singer-Songwriter-Psychotherapist
Singer and songwriter Sara Kamin jokes that she never sleeps. That’s because she’s juggling a burgeoning music career with teaching college-level psychology classes and completing her post-graduate studies in psychotherapy. The Toronto-based Kamin, 30. has three folk/pop/blues albums under her belt. And her music has been getting increased attention — and airplay — thanks in…
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The Schmooze The Assaf Kehati Trio Jazzes Up The Beehive and The Blue Note
Music lovers preoccupied with the question of “whither Jewish jazz?” will want to attend the June 19 performance by the Assaf Kehati Trio at Boston’s The Beehive, in anticipation of their scheduled sets at New York’s The Blue Note on August 1. The trio consists of guitarist Assaf Kehati, an Israeli-born resident of Boston, veteran…
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The Schmooze A Funky Little Yiddish Princess
It’s hard to beat Yiddish Princess’s own self-description (as per their MySpace page): “Melodramatic Popular Song” “Kick Ass Yiddish Power Ballads” “Influences: Kate Bush, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Mina Bern, Molly Picon, Pat Benatar, Suki & Ding” “Sounds Like: Celine Dion (if she went to Kheder)” Not all of this is strictly true —…
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The Schmooze Amid Cancellations, Editors Host Israeli Music Festival
Despite high-profile cancellations by the Pixies, Gorillaz and the Klaxons, the PiC.NiC music festival in Tel Aviv played host yesterday to Editors — and the band took to its online forum after the concert to call the performance “one of the most memorable shows of our career.” Lead singer Tom Smith, writing for the band…
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The Schmooze Small Nations Stick Together at the Israeli Jazz Festival
So, what was a non-Jewish, non-Israeli Cuban doing organizing the NYC Israeli Jazz Festival, anyway? “Someone had to do it,” said Roberto Rodriguez who composes, leads and plays drums for the Cuban Jewish All-Stars. After 20 shows and over 1000 people passing through the doors at John Zorn’s non-profit jazz space The Stone last week,…
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The Schmooze Could Elvis Costello Be Coming to Israel After All?
His wife, the Canadian jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall, is to perform in Ra’anana in August, and the international pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs has offered Elvis Costello a “five star VIP tour of Israel” if he accompanies her on the trip. The Forward recently reported that Costello canceled his June 30 and July 1…
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The Schmooze Rabbi Greg Wall on the BBC
The BBC doesn’t interview American rabbis all that often, let alone mention them in a completely spiritual, non-political context. But their recent special on Rabbi Greg Wall pleasantly defies expectations. Wall is a jazz and klezmer virtuoso who was recently ordained as a rabbi and appointed to lead the Sixth Street Synagogue in New York,…
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