A lost Yiddish opera complete, and in performance, at last
How a composer, librettist and historian filled in the blanks on the missing masterpiece 'Bas Sheve'
Yiddish Music
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Music Meet the musicians turning old Yiddish poems into 21st-century songs
Two new albums reimagine a centuries-old tradition of adapting poetry to music
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Forverts in English Now streaming: Musician’s fascinating journey to find Ukrainian Jewish folksongs
In the 1920s, after the horrific pogroms that followed the Russian Revolution, a Jewish musician and ethnomusicologist named Moyshe Beregovsky, also known as Moisei Iakovlevich Beregovskii, travelled across Ukraine with a phonograph in hand, seeking to record the authentic Yiddish music of Ukrainian Jewry. Among the hundreds of songs that he collected were Yiddish folk…
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Fast Forward A millennial Yiddish music maven launches a record label
(JTA) — (New York Jewish Week via JTA) – Steadfast listeners of “Borscht Beat” — a weekly FM radio show featuring Jewish music, old and new — will be thrilled to hear of host Aaron Bendich’s latest project: a new Jewish record label of the same name. On his hour-long radio program, the 27-year-old plays…
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Forverts in English VIDEO: Cantor’s jazzy remake of Yiddish song of hope
Yisroel Leshes, assistant cantor of New York’s Orthodox Lincoln Square Synagogue, has released a cool, jazzy version of Morris Winchevsky’s Yiddish song, “Di Tsukunft” (“The Future”), which dreams of the day when “di velt vet vern frayer, shener, yinger, nayer” (“the world will be freer, lovelier, younger and newer”). The music video, accompanied by English…
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Forverts in English How a Yiddish folksong appeared on a 1967 American pop album
At the height of his success in 1967, Jay Black, lead singer of the pop band, Jay and the Americans, recorded a popular Yiddish folk song and managed to convince his record label, United Artists, to include it on the B-side of their album, “Try Some of This!” The story, first published by the Forward…
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Forverts in English Online festival, Yiddish New York, open for registration
The U.S.’s largest annual Yiddish culture festival, Yiddish New York, is once again going to be conducted online, enabling people all over the globe to participate in its wide variety of workshops and lectures. The festival will take place from December 25 to December 30, 2021. Among the many sessions participants can choose to attend…
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Forverts in English VIDEO: Polina Shepherd sings a new Yiddish song, ‘The Tempest Breakers’
This week, a video of a new Yiddish song, Di Veln (The Tempest Breakers), was posted on YouTube, performed by singer-songwriter Polina Shepherd, with piano accompaniment. The lyrics are by the late expressionist poet, Abraham Nahum Stencl, and the melody and arrangement – by Shepherd herself. The video was produced by the Forverts. Abraham Nahum…
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