Shabbat in Liverpool: New CD adapts Beatles’ tunes for services

Published on January 4, 2011

Documentary goes behind the music video with Chutzpah

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on September 10, 2008

"My big idea for the CD was, 'Let's give this to our families for Chanukah,'" Hyams said. "I never thought we'd get a record deal, because I figured 'This is stupid and Jewish and no one cares except us.'"

Brooks Arthur brings stars’ hearts and humor to ‘Jewish Songbook’ CD

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on June 18, 2008

Music producer Brooks Arthur turns nostalgic with a new CD of classic Jewish music

Fresh music choices include Pesach treats

By George Robinson
Published on April 17, 2008

Not much Passover music arrived in this year's mail so it's difficult to speculate on the ebb and flow of certain kinds of Jewish music recordings, but it does seem that fewer holiday-specific records are coming out of late. On the other hand, the flood of spiritually informed contemporary Jewish music shows no signs of abating, and this month's CD reviews focus on some of the most recent examples of that phenomena, including some tasty Pesach treats:

Eight Jewish albums hit high notes in ‘07

By George Robinson
Published on December 20, 2007

Jewish music of 2007 reviewed.

For listening, for giving—klezmer and its cousins

By George Robinson
Published on November 29, 2007

CD reviews, Metropolitan Klezmer, "Traveling Show", The Polina Shepherd Vocal Experience (featuring Quartet Ashkenazim), "Baym Taykh", Blue Fringe, "The Whole World Lit Up" , Gail Javitt, "Like a Braided Candle, Songs for Havdalah", Klezamir, "Warm Your Hands", Romashka, "Romashka", Chana Rothman, "We Can Rise", Slavic Soul Party, "Teknochek Collision".

Originality trumps repetition in the holiday songs battle

By George Robinson
Published on December 7, 2006

I will be frank. I'm tired of hearing the same holiday songs over and over. So the best Chanukah present I've received this year is a pile of Chanukah-themed CDs with lots of new holiday songs, many of them quite good.

Violinist Joshua Bell walks in the footsteps of masters

By George Robinson
Published on October 12, 2006

Bell is, by his own admission, more of a cultural Jew than a religious one. "My mother is Jewish, a very typical Jewish mother," he said. "She was very involved in my practicing. Both my parents were behind me and loved music. But for me, Jewishness was very much a cultural tie. I feel very close to the Jewish side of the family. I grew up with my Jewish cousins, going to all the bar mitzvahs, so I feel very close to that side, and I identify myself as being Jewish."

Holiday tunes for when you haven’t got a prayer

By George Robinson
Published on September 21, 2006

The High Holidays provide some of the greatest frissons one can experience in a synagogue. And the music is, indeed, a big part of those rising chills.

Spectator - A Musical Trek to Israel

By George Robinson
Published on April 27, 2006

For 2,000 years, Jewish music has been a hybrid compounded of elements picked up from our neighbors. Salamone Rossi created Italian Baroque settings of Hebrew texts. Chasidic niggunim drew on Viennese waltz music and Eastern European military marches. Sulzer and Lewandowski wrote like German Protestants. In the Diaspora, Jewish music has always been a hyphenate.

Fit L.A. - Let’s Take a ‘J-Walk’ Around the Block

By Norma Zager
Published on January 19, 2006

After schlepping 40 years in the desert, it's hard to imagine a CD to exercise by coming from a people who have harbored a subconscious distrust of walking. But with my daughter's upcoming nuptials, my unending kvetch about fitting into the dress won out over my skepticism.

Spectator - It’s Hip to Be Chutzpah

By Gaby Friedman
Published on December 8, 2005

When you think of hip-hop or rap, you don't generally think of jowl-necked septuagenarians or skinny, psyched-out white guys rapping about the tsuris their mother gives them, but then again, you don't generally think of Jews either.

Shticking It to the Classics

By Nancy Sokoler Steiner
Published on September 29, 2005

This is not your grandmother's Jewish music. Like other recent Jewish parody CDs, "Meshugeneh Mambo" carries on the tradition of Jewish humor popularized by such forbearers as Mickey Katz and Allan Sherman.

7 Days in The Arts

By Keren Engelberg
Published on September 29, 2005

7 Days in the Arts

Spectator - A Hand in Global Harmony

By Gaby Friedman
Published on August 18, 2005

The Middle Eastern fusion music on "Hamsa" is so insidiously infectious and rhythmic that you will not only be humming along but tapping your feet, as well.

Soothing Music Memories

By Ellie Kahn
Published on May 26, 2005

"What I wanted was music that touches people's souls and hearts in many different ways in their time of need," Len Lawrence said.

It’s Not Your Zayde’s Klezmer Anymore

By Gaby Friedman
Published on May 19, 2005

"There was level of musical sophistication that goes with the kind of music you can play on the mandolin, and my intention was to start a new acoustic-fusion thing, with an emphasis on string and wind instruments," said Eric Stein, who went on to form Beyond the Pale, a klezmer-fusion band.

7 Days in the Arts

By Keren Engelberg
Published on December 16, 2004

Tis the season for cocktail parties, so why not one more. The Anti-Defamation League hosts its 2004 Los Angeles Celebration this evening, complete with dinner, dancing, martini bar and keynote speech by Harvard professor/defense attorney/Israel defender Alan Dershowitz.

Spend Chanukah Barenaked

By Keren Engelberg
Published on December 2, 2004

While naming your holiday album "Barenaked for the Holidays" is a pretty catchy way to get some attention, for the quirky pop band that calls itself the Barenaked Ladies, it made sense -- about as much sense as getting naked on "The Sharon Osbourne Show" last year, anyway. Apparently, stripping down's just part of the offbeat Canadians' sense of fun. So it follows that anyone expecting the Ladies' holiday album to be anything less than silly would be, well, silly.

The new CD offers up revamped Christmas, Chanukah and New Year's classics, as well as a few original tunes, including one called "Hanukkah Blessings," written by Jewish band member Steven Page. The reinterpreted songs include a version of "Jingle Bells" that has "the extra lines you remember from being a kid," Page recently told rollingstone.com.

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7 Days in the Arts

By Keren Engelberg
Published on October 14, 2004

7 Days in the Arts.

7 Days In Arts

Published on September 16, 2004

7 Days in the Arts

Aroeste Gives New Life to Ladino Tunes

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on September 9, 2004

Purists were skeptical when Sarah Aroeste debuted her Ladino rock 'n' roll band back in 2001. Most artists singing in the fading Sephardic language were traditionalists, performing classical versions of songs dating to the Jews' expulsion from Spain in 1492.

But here was Aroeste, mixing rock and jazz with the flamenco and Middle Eastern-tinged music of her ancestors, singing those same lush romances accompanied by electric guitar as well as oud. And, the New York press noted, she was doing so while performing with a bare midriff and gyrating hips -- moves that led several publications to label her "The Jewish Shakira."

Robbo to Sing at Center Gala

By Stefanee Freedman
Published on August 5, 2004

Robb Zelonky is scheduled to appear in Irvine after a two-month tour of California, bringing a special show with songs tailored to Jewish culture. He has also produced four secular CDs.

Music Makes the Service Go ‘Round

By Andrea Adelson
Published on May 6, 2004

Since distributing a CD of hymns to members of Tustin's Congregation B'nai Israel, the Conservative synagogue's cantor, Marcia Tilchin, and congregant Carl Cedar, a veteran musician, no longer sing alone in the sparsely filled sanctuary on Friday night.

Shoah Book Brings Museum Experience

By Steve Lipman
Published on March 11, 2004

Michael Berenbaum, a first-rate scholar and writer, who was founding director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., has produced, in effect, a traveling museum, or in barely more than two score pages, a traveling museum exhibit.

Etan G—A Nice Jewish Homeboy

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on March 4, 2004

The boychick is Etan G, who calls himself The Jewish Rapper and whose CD, "South Side of the Synagogue," features songs such as "Yo Yo Yarmulke" and "Hava Na Wha?" Even so, it's startling when he ushers a visitor into a living room that appears to be decorated by the set dressers from both "Yentl" and "Shaft."

7 Days In Art

Published on December 25, 2003

Shhh! Today and tomorrow, the Silent Movie Theatre presents "The Silent Picture Show."

7 Days In Arts

Published on December 18, 2003

7 Days In The Arts

7 Days In Arts

Published on November 20, 2003

7 Days In The Arts

An Afro Judeo Beat

By Jewish Journal Staff
Published on November 13, 2003

Tired of the same old synagogue music? Want to put a little lift in your liturgy? Then give your cantor the gift of Ugandan Jewish music, Say what?

Yes, Smithsonian Folkways has just released a singular CD titled, "Abayudaya: The Music of the Jews of Uganda."

This is a sometimes lilting, often haunting and always fascinating collection of African Jewish music in which the rhythms and harmonies of Africa blend with Jewish celebration and traditional Hebrew prayer.

Power of Song Gives Hope to Mourners

By Ellen Jaffe-Gill
Published on August 28, 2003

Chayim Frenkel, cantor at Kehillat Israel in Pacific Palisades, conceived "Nishmat Tzedek" ("A Righteous Soul") in 1993 after his brother Tzvi, 39, died suddenly, the victim of an undetected blood disease.

7 Days In Arts

Published on July 10, 2003

7 Days in Arts

Voice Across Israel

By Keren Engelberg
Published on February 20, 2003

The Jewish Agency, in conjunction with the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit and the Hed Arzi Music Company, has released a CD of Israeli pop music to benefit Israeli victims of terror, titled "Yesh Od Tikva" (Our Hope Endures).

Memory Through Music

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on January 16, 2003

When Andrzej Szpilman was 12, he furtively rummaged through a chest high on a shelf of a closed wardrobe in his Warsaw home. Inside the closet, he found 10 copies of a book and, recognizing his father as the author, hid one in his third-story bedroom. "I read it and received a shock," said Andrzej Szpilman, 46, a dentist and record producer who immigrated to Germany in 1983.

The book was "Death of a City," his father, Wladyslaw's, grittily brutal, dispassionate 1946 memoir of hiding in and around the Warsaw Ghetto. Since Roman Polanski turned the book into a searing film, "The Pianist" -- which won four National Society of Film Critics Awards and is up for two Golden Globes on Sunday -- Szpilman has become one of the best-known Holocaust survivors in history.

7 Days In Arts

Published on January 2, 2003

7 Days in Arts

New Jewish Music

By Andrea Adelson
Published on December 5, 2002

During Orange County's annual "Chanukah Concert", a corner of Costa Mesa's Performing Arts Center is transformed into an all-Jewish music store featuring CDs recorded by some Reform cantors who participate in the performance.

"They don't have much opportunity to put their CDs up for sale," said Dr. Gordon Fishman of Newport Beach, who co-produces the concert with his wife, Hannareta. She and some friends supervise sales, which this year include works by Ruti Brier, Nancy Linder, Shula Kalir-Merton and Arie Shikler. Also available are CDs by the Orange County Klezmers, who play at the concert intermission.

When Stiller Met Singer

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on December 13, 2001

Stiller says he was drawn to the family-oriented radio series, "One People, Many Stories" -- in which celebrities read Jewish tales by authors such as Sheldon Oberman and Isaac Bashevis Singer -- because the literature connect him to his own family stories.

Anne Frank’s Changing Image

By Tom Tugend
Published on May 17, 2001

Fifty-six years after Anne Frank perished in Bergen-Belsen, her life and legacy loom larger than ever.

Nostalgia Trip

By Ellen Jaffe-Gill
Published on December 21, 2000

In his new CD, "Garden of Yidn" (Naxos World), violinist and music historian Yale Strom, who will be in concert in Los Angeles next week, offers tunes going back as far as the early 19th century, giving the listener not only a superior musical experience but some fascinating historical sketches of Jews in the Yiddish- and Ladino-speaking world.

Groovy Kitsch

By Carvin Knowles
Published on December 14, 2000

"Let My People Go-Go" is a very kitschy CD, but this isn't your ordinary, everyday kitsch.