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The Schmooze Friday Film: Phil Ochs Finally Gets His Biopic
Last month, fans of 1960s singer-songwriter Phil Ochs got some long-delayed gratification when the film “Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune,” directed by Kenneth Bowser, opened in limited release at New York’s IFC Center. With reviews ranging from good to excellent, the movie is now scheduled for runs at 57 theaters nationwide. Aficionados are optimistic…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Contemporary Concertos Go Baroque
One might be forgiven, upon first listening to the NAXOS recording of Avner Dorman’s concertos performed by Andrew Cyr’s Metropolis Ensemble, for not feeling immediately convinced that these are, in fact, concertos in any traditional sense. There are no buoyant Mozartian introductions here, no grand orchestral pauses to launch soloists into rapturously virtuosic cadenzas before…
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The Schmooze A New Symphony for Ramat Gan
Crossposted from Haaretz Quietly, almost imperceptibly, a new Israeli symphony orchestra is emerging. Given the minuscule government budget allocated to local musical ensembles, there will surely be some people who will be unhappy about this: Many advocate the “divide and conquer” ideology that seeks to close down orchestras or at least combine a few together,…
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The Schmooze Keeping Up With the Techies
Crossposted from Haaretz Singer Avigail Roz has spent many hours with Yoni Bloch, who produced her albums “Milchama Yomyomit” (“Daily War”), which was released three years ago, and “Hetzi Nehama” (“Half a Consolation”), forthcoming at the end of the month. But when it comes to technology, they are on opposite sides of the barricades. While…
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The Schmooze House-Trained Labrador for Sale on MySpace
Crossposted from Haaretz The story of “Labrador Labratories” (sic) should be taught in workshops for developing creativity. A year and a half ago, after the unknown Makolet band broke up, soloist Tom Gottlieb found himself suffering from a creative block. “In Makolet there was a very critical atmosphere,” he says. “We would sit a lot…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: For Uruguayan Pop Star Jorge Drexler, Jewishness Is a Connecting Force
The Skirball Center, a sober cultural institution on Los Angeles’s ritzy Westside, was unusually alive on January 27. Music journalists, record executives and South American diplomats with an array of Spanish accents — from Argentina to Spain to East Los Angeles — bounced about the room. Along with the requisite contingent of L.A. yentas and…
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The Schmooze Berlin New Music Festival Honors Avant-Garde Composer Alexander Goehr
For over half a century, Alexander Goehr has been one of England’s most important composers, an avant-garde musician whose varied (and often challenging) body of work has been championed by luminaries including Pierre Boulez, Simon Rattle, Daniel Barenboim and Jacqueline de Pré. Goehr’s manuscripts have recently been acquired by the music archive of Berlin’s Akademie…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Banned in Tel Aviv, Monotonix Tours Stateside
Though they hail from Tel Aviv, punk outfit Monotonix sounds like 1970s New York punk by way of Los Angeles rockabilly garage heroes like X, The Germs and Alice Bag. On their new album, the speedy half hour long “Not Yet,” lead singer Ami Shalev expectorates, clears his throat and howls through 10 fast-paced tracks….
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