Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
The Latest
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Opinion Help Us Find The Best New Voices in Jewish Music
I came of age with a guitar in hand. As anyone who has heard me play knows, I have scarcely progressed beyond the fundamental G-C-F notes that I taught myself in high school, as my friends and I happily wasted many hours pretending to be Carole King and Joni Mitchell, when in fact we sounded…
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The Schmooze Hasidic Stars Bring Yiddish Soul to Central Park
It’s as if the rain knew to stop precisely at 6 o’clock. After one of the wettest days of the month, the sky turned from gray to blue, the clouds parted for the last hour of Tuesday sun, and Yiddish Soul took the stage at Central Park’s Rumsey Playfield. The concert, a showcase of cantorial…
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The Schmooze The Secret Jewish History of Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman, one of the greatest musical innovators of the 20th century and the man who coined the term “free jazz,” died this morning in Manhattan of cardiac arrest. He was 85. A saxophonist, composer and bandleader, Coleman, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2007 for his album, “Sound Grammar,” began playing jazz…
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Music Violinist Completes Father’s Piece Cut Short by Nazis
In Raanana, Israel, Eugene Drucker’s brown eyes welled with tears as he finished a rendition of Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77, which his father began 80 years prior in Germany, only to be cut short by anti-Semitic Nazi policy. Accompanied by the Raanana Symphonette Orchestra, the 63-year-old, says his father, Ernest Drucker,…
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Breaking News Jewish, Arab Youths Promote Harmony in Israel Through Music
Arab and Jewish students in Israel are trying to bridge the gap between their two communities one note at a time through classical music programs that bring together some of the country’s best musicians. The Polyphony Foundation, which was created in 2011 by New York residents Deborah and Craig Cogut and artistic director Nabeel Abboud-Ashkar,…
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The Schmooze 4 Holy Land Bands Building Peace Through Music
A few weeks ago, we introduced you to . However, in our listening escapades, we also found a number of bands from the region with multicultural members that are using music to help aid in communication, share peace-building techniques, and entertain and inspire across geographic and political lines. Members of these groups, many of which…
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The Schmooze Doing Coachella the Jewish Way
(JTA) — The second weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival starts today. That means nearly 100,000 people will descend upon the Colorado Desert in Indio, California for what has become the world’s highest-grossing music festival. For most normal humans, the festivities double as an extreme endurance test. Temperatures regularly creep toward 100…
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Culture Philip Glass Settles Some Old Scores
Channeling the good Jewish son he never quite was, Philip Glass gives the first line of his new memoir to his mother: “If you go to New York City to study music,” she warns her youngest on the occasion of his graduation from the University of Chicago in 1957, “you’ll end up like your uncle…
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