It’s been a year since the Metropolitan Opera fired conductor James Levine, its longtime music director, following allegations of sexual abuse. In short order, Levine sued the Met for breach of contract and defamation. On Tuesday, March 26, Justice Andrea Masley of the New York State Supreme Court moved to dismiss all but one of…
In recent years, the musicianship of André Previn — the conductor, pianist, and composer of German Jewish origin who has died at the age of 89 — has finally been celebrated more than his once-hectic personal life. Previn was formerly married to the songwriter Dory Previn, actress Mia Farrow, and violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, among his…
R. Kelly’s latest legal case was never going to be a low profile affair. The “Trapped in the Closet” singer, whose real name is Robert Kelly, was arrested in Chicago Friday, February 22, on charges of aggravated sexual abuse spanning over a decade and involving four women, three of whom were minors at the time,…
With the country in a dire state, there’s a conundrum facing artwork with progressive ideals: It’s easy for them to sound cursory, like Twitter activism, except onstage. That’s the difficulty that might have faced Julia Wolfe’s oratorio “Fire in my mouth,” which had its world premiere at the New York Philharmonic on January 24 and…
In 1955, just when klezmer was about to end its half-century-long run as a viable commercial and creative outlet for immigrant-era Jewish musicians and a few younger instrumentalists who took up their torch, the great Ukrainian-born clarinetist Dave Tarras recorded one more album at the urging and with the creative guidance of his son-in-law, Sam…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. After four years of scouring Youtube for Yiddish-language videos to feature in the Forverts’ weekly cultural supplement Oneg Shabes, I thought that I had pretty much found them all. Luckily, there are still some treasures out there to be uncovered. Case in point: Rokhl Kafrissen recently posted…
If you’re one Aubrey Graham — known to the masses by the mononym Drake — you may be wondering how you could outdo yourself this year. In January of 2018, after two solid years fueling countless internet memes with “Hotline Bling,” you were nominated for five Grammys and won two. How could your 2019 be…
In his new memoir, “Thanks a Lot, Mr. Kibblewhite: My Story” (Henry Holt) – a horribly titled but entertaining and revealing read — Roger Daltrey gives his version of the story of the rock band, the Who, territory that his bandmate and on-again, off-again friend and collaborator, Pete Townshend, already reviewed in his own chronicle,…
The Weavers, an American folk music quartet, sold millions of records in the late 1940s and early 50s. Its two Jewish performers, Ronnie Gilbert, Fred Hellerman, were joined by two non-Jews, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger. In the 1960s, Bernie Krause, another American Jewish singer, replaced Seeger in the group. Their hits included “Goodnight, Irene”…
Arguably the best banjo player in the world is — wait for it — a Jewish kid from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His name is Béla Anton Leoš Fleck, and reached by phone at his home in Nashville, he agreed that what may at first seem an unlikely pairing of man and instrument…
Joni Mitchell is widely acclaimed, and rightfully so, for being one of the greatest lyricists and musical visionaries of the rock era: the equal of Bob Dylan and — well, there are no other equals. Mitchell and Dylan share the seemingly paradoxical status of being utter mavericks who have had unparalleled influence over everyone who…
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