Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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The Schmooze Friday Film: Iraq, Israel, and Rock ‘n’ Roll
Courtesy of Ruth Diskin Films An intergenerational connection through music is at the heart of “Iraq n’ Roll,” a new Israeli documentary by Gili Gaon, which screened this year at the Jerusalem International Film Festival and is out on DVD next month. In the 1950s, brothers Saleh and Daoud Al-Kuwaity made aliyah to Israel. They…
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The Schmooze Jerusalem Cinematheque Bans Wagner Broadcasts
Crossposted from Haaretz The Jerusalem Cinematheque has decided not to screen two works by composer Richard Wagner from the opera season of the New York Metropolitan Opera, which will be broadcast live beginning October 15. Starting this year, the Jerusalem Cinematheque joins the 1,600 theaters throughout the world that already use sophisticated HD technology to…
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The Schmooze Could Paul Simon Be Your Professor?
Courtesy of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Paul Simon is best known as a singer, songwriter and guitarist — not a college professor and academic. But Simon, who was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on October 1, had a brief stint in academia, teaching a songwriting class at New…
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The Schmooze Setting Yehuda Amichai to Music
Crossposted from Haaretz Israel Bright is an excellent composer of music for songs based on poetry, as everyone who has listened to his wonderful 2004 recording, “Otsar Samui” (“Hidden Treasure”), will know. But despite the preceding statement, and despite the fact that Bright took obvious and joyous liberties with the earlier recording (a poem by…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Opera in the Steampunk Age
Ben Z. Mund Photography Over the last few years a number of bands, ranging from Brooklyn-based punk rock outfit Golem to indie stalwart Beirut, have found inspiration in the diverse sounds of Eastern European music. Just as 19-century Romani lăutari musicians mixed peasant songs with ceremonial Byzantine church songs, Turkish folk songs and klezmer, these…
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The Schmooze Algeria and Jamaica, By Way of Golan Heights
Crossposted from Haaretz Brothers Hasan and Rami Nakhleh, from the Golan Heights Druze village of Majdal Shams, were raised on classical music. Classical Arab music, that is. Hassan studied Oriental violin. He can play, in their considerable entirety, works made famous by singers Umm Kulthum, Fairuz and other great “roots” musicians, as he calls them….
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The Schmooze Nebuchadnezzar Becomes a Jew at the Met
Just in time for the High Holy Days, the Metropolitan Opera is bringing back its production of one of the few works of music that helped change history. “Nabucco” (Nebuchadnezzar), a wildly eccentric story inspired by the biblical Lamentations of Jeremiah, was Giuseppe Verdi’s first professional breakthrough, and it helped inspire the Risorgiomento, which ended…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: The Klezmatics at 25
Courtesy of GAT publicity The Klezmatics are 25 this year (where does the time go?), and to mark the anniversary, they’ve released “Live at Town Hall,” a two-disc recording of a performance given in New York five years ago. That concert, itself an exuberant 20th anniversary celebration, was recorded in conjunction with “The Klezmatics: On…
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