Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
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The Schmooze Where Are the Local Composers?
Crossposted from Haaretz Fourteen years ago the Israeli Ministry of Culture, through its music department, devised a program for boosting local concert music: It created the Israeli Music Celebration, a festival of free performances at which Israeli ensembles and soloists would give concerts consisting exclusively of works by Israeli composers. The idea was a good…
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The Schmooze Leonard Cohen’s Yiddish Song
We were remiss in not wishing Leonard Cohen a happy birthday yesterday, but the 77-year-old Montreal poet, novelist and singer-songwriter has other consolations. On October 11, Legacy Recordings will re-release 17 discs of Cohen’s back catalogue as a box set, including all of his studio albums and a few live ones, as well. The “Complete…
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The Schmooze Q&A: Cellist Alisa Weilerstein on Winning ‘Genius Award’
Cellist Alisa Weilerstein was at the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival last week when she received an unexpected phone call from the MacArthur Foundation telling her she was a recipient of their 2011 fellowship. The “Genius Award,” as it is called, is a no-strings-attached grant of $500,000, paid out over five years. Weilerstein, 29, is…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Making a Loving Mockery of Modern Orthodoxy
It all started with a video that went viral. Shortly after The Groggers’ frontman L.E. Staiman got back from studying in yeshiva in Israel, he began recording punk songs with quirky Jewish-themed concepts. The demos got positive feedback from friends, but he was told that there was no demographic that would “get” his songs. Then…
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The Schmooze Amy Winehouse’s Last Song
This week, in honor of what would have been Amy Winehouse’s 28th birthday, her duet with the legendary crooner Tony Bennett was released. The two recorded the jazz standard “Body and Soul” last March, just four months before Winehouse’s untimely death, to which no definitive cause has been attributed. In a video about the recording…
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The Schmooze In Song: Ki Tavo
Photo by Jim Summaria, via Wiki Commons Each week The Arty Semite connects the Torah reading — however tenuously — with a classic work of rock ‘n’ roll. In this week’s parsha, Ki Tavo, the Israelites are commanded to bring their first fruits to the Temple and present them along with a recitation (which is…
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The Schmooze Black Metal for the Sonderkommandos
British black metal band The Meads of Asphodel are beginning work on an album about the Sonderkommandos, Jewish inmates who operated the gas chambers and crematoria in the concentration camps. According to metal news website blabbermouth, the band’s lead singer, Metatron (whose moniker comes from the name of a Jewish angel), is traveling to Krakow…
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The Schmooze Israel’s Leading Film Composer in France
Crossposted from Haaretz Armand Amar’s name can be found on ads in the Paris metro, on round billboard signs throughout the capital, and on movie house posters. But the Israeli-born French musician and composer is listed at the bottom, in small print, underneath the films’ leading actors and directors. As a film composer, Amar is…
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