Music

Fight For Your Right To … Be Jewishly Proud

Lisa Shimabukuro — Wed, 09 May 2012 18:49:00 +0000

Music

Andrew Furman

Special To The Jewish Week

Remembering the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch and the thorny question of cultural authenticity.

It never would have occurred to me that the passing of the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch (aka MCA) would hit me so hard. Yet I’ve been awfully sad ever since reading the headline across the CNN crawl last week. It’s not something I’ve contemplated much until Yauch’s death, at 47 from cancer. But the Beastie Boys really did mean something to me when they first emerged on the national scene almost three decades ago.

‘Yakety Yak’ At Eldridge Street

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:52:00 +0000

Music

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Storied musical couple — pop songwriter Mike Stoller and jazz harpist Corky Hale Stoller — to kick off ‘In Conversation’ series.

Mike Stoller doesn’t know how many songs he wrote with Jerry Leiber.

“Several hundred probably,” he says. “I never kept count.”

Corky Hale Stoller Mike Stoller Museum of Eldridge Street

The Sound Of Ginsberg’s ‘Kaddish’

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:43:00 +0000

Music

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Eclectic jazz guitarist Bill Frisell tackles an iconic poem.

It is purely coincidence, no doubt, that Allen Ginsberg wrote his epic poem “Kaddish” three years after the death of his mother Naomi, and eclectic jazz guitarist Bill Frisell began work on his musical accompaniment to that poem three years after the death of his mother Jane.

allen ginsberg Bill Frisell kaddish

The Voices Of Terezin

Dani Shetrit — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:08:00 +0000

Music

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Gerald Cohen’s new composition takes inspiration from the concentration camp’s performers.

For Jewish-American children of European immigrants of a certain age, the Shoah is more personal reality than historical memory. If they work in the arts, it is an open question that hangs in the air until it is finally faced. For composer and cantor Gerald Cohen, the time is now.

Speech Pathology

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:33:00 +0000

Music

Eric Herschthal

Staff Writer

In his new, post-apocalyptic novel, Ben Marcus ponders the dark side of language.

No one can seem to get over the fact that Ben Marcus, the scion of avant-garde literature and its most impassioned defender, recently published a fairly traditional novel, “The Flame Alphabet.” It has all the trappings of normative fiction — a plot, emotionally developed characters, even some good old-fashioned drama.

book Marcus The Flame Alphabet

‘The Tango Is In My Blood’

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:31:00 +0000

Music

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Forward-thinking cellist Maya Beiser tackles the music her father brought with him from Argentina to an Israeli kibbutz.

When Tito Beiser left Argentina in the early 1950s to help start a Galilee kibbutz centered around members of the Argentine chapter of Hashomer Hatzair, he brought a lot of his home with him — food, soccer, Spanish and, most of all, tango.

cellist Kibbutz Maya Beiser Tango

‘The Artist’ Director’s Nod To Billy Wilder

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 23:38:00 +0000

Music

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Michel Hazanavicius says a certain kind of Jewish outlook, like Wilder’s, informs his work.

It is a long way from pogroms in Eastern Europe to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.

For Michel Hazanavicius it is highly likely that the trip will only have taken three generations.

Rabbinic Jazz

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:48:00 +0000

Music

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Poet Jake Marmer teams up with Rabbi Greg Wall and trumpeter Frank London.

From the first, poetry was linked to music. Torah has always been chanted. The Greek bards accompanied themselves on instruments. The distinction between verse and song probably was an elastic one until the coming of the printing press. Whenever the disconnect took place, whatever its cause, poetry and music have continued to run alongside one another, two long railroad tracks that intersect frequently, if not constantly.

Just ask Jake Marmer.

“All poetry began as song, and jazz-and-poetry has always existed,” the Ukraine-born poet says with a grin.

Jake Marmer Jazz

‘The Label Tried To Do It All’

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:06:00 +0000

Music

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Idelsohn Society unearths the eclectic offerings from Tikva Records covering the ‘Jet Set’ ‘50s and ‘60s.

Listening to Jewish-American music from the 1950s and ’60s is frequently a bewildering experience. Jewish cha-chas? Israeli fuzz-tone guitar bands? Johnny Mathis singing “Kol Nidre?”

“This [cross-cultural] music fascinated us,” says Roger Bennett, one of the co-founders of the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation. “Each track is a footprint through history. They pose a set of eclectic questions about Jewish-American identity and community, and how they changed in the post-war era.”

Shostakovich’s Symphonic Shot At The Soviets

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:37:00 +0000

Music

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

N.Y. Philharmonic to perform ‘Babi Yar,’ the composer’s public rebuke of the Kremlin.

There’s a special look that artists develop when they live under a brutal dictatorship. It’s a shiftiness in the eyes that comes from always looking behind to see who is listening and taking notes when they speak, write, paint, compose. Dmitri Shostakovich must have had that look down pat.

“He was on a list,” Victoria Bond says. “They must have watched his every move.”

Dmitri Shostakovich New York Philharmonic

Joel Rubin, In Two Keys

Dani Shetrit — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 20:01:52 +0000

Music

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

The tradition-minded clarinetist steps ‘out’ in new album, but goes back ‘in’ for rare N.Y. show.

Joel Rubin doesn’t get to New York very often these days. Being a professor at the University of Virginia is something of a full-time job.
So when the clarinetist-ethnomusicologist doffs mortarboard and travels north with his instrument, as will be the case on Oct. 11, it is well worth making the trip to Manhattan to hear what he’s doing.

The Kol Nidre Project

Lisa Shimabukuro — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 19:53:31 +0000

Music

George Robinson

Special To The Jewish Week

One prayer, several melodies and 18 perspectives explored in documentary and related concert.

The text is straightforward but dry. It’s a little like singing a rental agreement.

Yet “Kol Nidre,” the liturgy for Yom Kippur eve, is one of the most spiritually powerful experiences Jewish worship has to offer. How does one explain this seeming contradiction?

Familiar Sound: Anat Cohen Picked As Top Clarinetist

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 18:05:00 +0000

Music

JTA

For the fifth straight year, Tel Aviv native Anat Cohen received the clarinetist of the year award from the Jazz Journalists Association.

The awards were presented here on Saturday.

Cohen’s latest CD, “Clarinetwork,” featured the music of legendary clarinetist Benny Goodman. It was recorded live at the Village Vanguard in 2009 during a weeklong centennial tribute to Goodman and included the A list rhythm section of Benny Green on piano, Peter Washington on bass and Lewis Nash on drums.

Anat Cohen Clarinetwork music

Sacred Texts, Personal Connections

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 May 2011 21:12:39 +0000

Music

George Robinson

Special To The Jewish Week

For Alicia Jo Rabins, bluegrass and the women of the Bible are a natural fit.

Alicia Jo Rabins wears so many hats there are probably days when she’d like to rent a second head. Rabins is a singer-songwriter, a poet, a fiddler and a private tutor for students of Torah ranging in age from traditional b’nai mitzvah students to senior citizens.

At the moment she is speaking to a reporter, though, she is a passenger in a van heading for the Maryland suburbs of Washington, where she is playing a gig with one of her various musical aggregations, Girls in Trouble, whose second album is being released later this month.

A ‘Prophet’ In Autumn

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 May 2011 19:14:46 +0000

Music

George Robinson

Special To The Jewish Week

As Bob Dylan turns 70, even the Cantors Assembly is taking notice.

On May 24, Bob Dylan will turn 70. It isn’t hard to predict what this fact will trigger. There will be a spate of editorials in a bewildering range of publications. Radio stations across the country and all over the FM band will air marathon selections of his recordings. Book and DVD publishers will release (and re-release) Dylan biographies. Boomers will have to brace themselves for an extensive encomium in AARP Magazine.