Arts & Culture | Music

‘Have A Good Laugh, Refresh Your Memory’

10/12/2010 | Ted Merwin | Music

His work spans the history of entertainment in modern America. Fyvush Finkel, one of the last performers from the heyday of the Yiddish theater, opens this weekend at the Folksbiene in “Fyvush Finkel Live!,” a nostalgic recap of his illustrious career on both stage and screen. Finkel, who turned 88 last weekend, will be joined by his two sons, pianist Elliot and xylophonist virtuoso Ian, along with veteran performers Merwyn Goldsmith and June Gable, in a revue that showcases the talents of one of the country’s most versatile and durable Jewish performers.

Her Grandma’s Back Pages

09/15/2010 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Music

Singer-songwriter Clare Burson confronts the ‘rupture’ in her family’s life with ‘Silver and Ash.’

Strong Jewish Women, The CD: Galeet Dardashti's 'The Naming'

09/08/2010 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Music

Galeet Dardashti, founder of the all-woman band Divahn, never set out to be a Jewish feminist icon or spokeswoman. She just wanted to follow in the footsteps of her highly musical family.

Generations Of Yiddish Song

07/27/2010 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Music

Fifty years ago, Yiddish was generally considered a dying language or one that was already dead if still upright. The Shoah and the Gulag had taken a dreadful toll on Yiddish speakers, readers and writers. Isaac Bashevis Singer was much feted as the last of his tribe (although the brilliant poet Abraham Sutzkever would live until 2009), and Yiddish-based musical forms were considered museum pieces.

Klezmer's 'Woody Guthrie' Celebrated

07/20/2010 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Music

The late jazz writer Gene Lees frequently remarked that jazz musicians tended to speak the way they played.

The same seems to have been true of German Goldenshteyn, the great klezmer clarinetist and a man who was a veritable human archive of the rich musical heritage of Bessarabia. Goldenshteyn, who died in 2006, was a Yiddish speaker whose inflections had a lilting, melodic rise and fall and a rhythmic precision not unlike his solos.

Copland’s Journey From Brooklyn To The Prairie

07/06/2010 | Robert Goldblum | Managing Editor | Music

Aaron Copland grew up in the cramped quarters of Brooklyn, the child of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants, but in his music he lit out for the territory. The architecture of city life — Deco skyscrapers and imposing Beaux-Arts museums — defined his early life, but in his music he sought sanctuary in the prairie.