Music

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 99
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    Steve Lawrence, singer and half of popular stage duo Steve & Eydie, dies at 88
    (NPR, 2024-03-07) Associated Press
    Obituary for Steve Lawrence, who died on March 7, 2024. Lawrence's musical career spanned decades. Throughout much of his career, he was part of a team, Steve & Edie, with his wife and partner, Edie Gormé. The pair, appearing as Steve & Edie, were frequent guests on talk shows, clubs, in Las Vegas, Carnegie Hall, and Broadway. Click on the link to read the obituary..
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    Remembering Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith, one of jazz’s first Jewish stars
    (The Jewish News of Northern California, 2023-11-22) Gilbert, Andrew
    An article about Willie Smith, the iconic African American jazz musician, the first jazz musician to claim a Jewish identity. When he was 3 years old, his mother married a man of Jewish heritage. In his 1964 autobiography, "Music on My Mind," he states that he is "Jewish partly by origin and partly by association. As it turned out I favored the Jewish religion all my life and at one time served as a Hebrew cantor in a Harlem congregation.” His mother took in washing and Smith, as a child, delivered clean laundry to a wealthy Jewish family. He was taken by the chanting he heard during the children's Hebrew lessons, and he ended up becoming a bar mitzvah at the age of 13. The article also includes a link to a YouTube video of Smith performing. Click on the link to read the article.
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    Billy Joel: The Piano Man Demonstrates Against Hate
    (The Forward, 2017-11-01) The Forward Staff
    The singer, Billy Joel, was raised in Long Island, New York. His father was a Jewish Holocaust survivor and the family downplayed their Jewishness. In fact, Billy Joel attended church as a child, and according to him, the most Jewish aspect of his upbringing was being circumcised. Although he is an atheist, he began to strongly identify himself as a Jew following the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, when he "got loud and proud about being Jewish," and wore a yellow Jewish star on his jacket at a concert in Madison Square Garden. Click on the link to read the article.
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    The Life and Times of Malvina Reynolds, Long Beach's Most Legendary (and Hated) Folk Singer
    (OC Weekly, 2016-08-31) Kelsen, D.
    An article about songwriter, Malvina Reynolds, who was best-known for having written the song "little Boxes." A scathing critique of the conformity of United States suburban culture, the song was made famous by Pete Seeger. It later became the theme song of the television series, "Weeds." Born to socialist Jewish immigrant parents, Reynolds was denied a high school diploma because of her parents' opposition to World War I. She remained active in left-wing causes, and much of her music reflected her political engagement. Click on the link above to read the article.
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    Dinah Shore: March 1, 1917–February 24, 1994
    (Jewish Women's Archive, 1999-12-31) Sochen, June
    Born in 1917 in Winchester, Tennessee as Frances “Fanny” Rose Stein, she described her Jewishness as one of the most important factors in shaping the person she later became. She felt pressured to be "exemplary in her behavior and outstanding in her performance." In the 1940s, she had a successful musical career in radio. In 1951 Shore transitioned to television with "The Dinah Shore Show," which was aired until 1956. After a long hiatus, Shore returned to television in 1970 with a variety show, and later had an afternoon talk show, in which she talked with guests and cooked with them and also sang. Her television career spanned 20 years. She was considered to be a fitting representative of the evolving roles of women. The length of her television career meant that the audience could see her aging. In this way she served as a model to older women, demonstrating that "aging was not a curse or a disease." Click on the link above to read the article.
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    11 Iconic Christmas Songs That Were Written By Jews
    (Kveller, 2020-12-22) Albert, Maddy
    This article discusses the fact that many iconic, secular Christmas songs were written by Jewish composers, including "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire," "Silver Bells," "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," and, perhaps the best-known, "White Christmas." Click on the link to read the article.
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    The Yosl and Chana Mlotek Yiddish Song Collection at the Workers Circle
    (The Workers Circle, 2023) Mlotek, Yosl, Mlotek, Chana
    A collection of five anthologies of Yiddish songs, each one organized around a specific theme and compiled by Yosl and Chana Mlotek. Each book includes information about the collection and the lyrics and music of the songs. On this site, you can also access performances of music from the collection.
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    Burt Bacharach, sophisticated Jewish hitmaker of the ’60s and ’70s, dies at 94
    (Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), 2023-02-09) Silow-Carroll, Andrew
    Burt Bacharach was a prolific and influential songwriter and composer, who, often in collaboration with lyricist Hal David, wrote hundreds of popular hit songs. His music is widely credited with elevating Dionne Warwick to stardom with such hits as "Do You Know the Way to San Jose," "Walk on By" and "I Say a Little Prayer." Silow-Carroll quotes Jonathan Freedman, author of the book, "Klezmer America: Jewishness, Ethnicity, Modernity,” as saying that what made Bacharach 's music Jewish is his “wild play with time signatures; he is to time signatures what [George] Gershwin is to chord changes," and is an example of how Jewish musicians “enter popular forms and make them their own.” Click on the link to read the article.
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    The Yiddish Philharmonic Chorus
    (The Yiddish Philharmonic Chorus, 2022) Bleaman, Isaac I
    The Yiddish Philharmonic Chorus, formerly the Jewish People’s Philharmonic Chorus , is a group of forty singers spanning multiple generations, who are "committed to promoting Yiddish language and culture through beautiful four-part harmony." They situate themselves as part of the "twenty-first-century Yiddish renaissance." The chorus performs at a variety of locations. Click on the ink above to see their homepage. See the links below for some of our entries on other venues for Yiddish music, plays and culture in the United States as well as Canada.
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    ‘Hallelujah’ Review: From Leonard Cohen to Cale to Buckley to Shrek: A new documentary tells the entwined stories of a songwriter and his best-known composition
    (New York Times, 2022-07-01) Scott, A.O.
    This is New York Times film reviewer, A.O. Scott's Critics Pick of the biographical documentary, "Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song." The directors, Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine trace the seven-year development of Leonard Cohen's best-known song, "Hallelujah." They trace his development from a poet and known figure in the Canadian literary community, his upbringing in the affluent Westmount section of Montreal, and his interest in Jewish and Buddhist religious teachings. Click on the link above to read Scott's review of the film. Click on the links below to see NAJC's other entries on Leonard Cohen.
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    Carole King
    (Jewish Women's Archive, 2021-06-23) Rosen, Nancy; Adelstein, Rachel
    "Over the course of a career spanning more than half a century, Carole King has shaped American popular music behind the scenes, on stage, and in the recording studio. With her first husband, Gerry Goffin, she composed popular hits for singers including Aretha Franklin, Little Eva, The Shirelles, and Bobby Vee. As a solo artist, she broke new ground with her 1971 album Tapestry. Since then, King has composed for albums, movies, and television, and for children as well as for adults. She has received numerous awards for her music and performance and has been the subject of a biographical Broadway musical." Click on the link above to read the rest of this biography.
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    Stephen Sondheim on West Side Jews, Israel, and Cole Porter
    (Tablet, 2021-11-30) Pogrebin, Abigail
    "An excerpt from ‘Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish’ about the legendary composer." Jews make up a small minority of the North American population. This leads many to assume that secular Jews grow up and work in essentially non-Jewish contexts. This interview suggests that this is not always the case. Click on the link above to access.
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    Stephen Sondheim, Titan of the American Musical, Is Dead at 91
    (The New York Times, 2021-11-26) Weber, Bruce
    A biographical essay on the occasion of the death of Stephen Sondheim, A Jewish American who was "one of Broadway history’s songwriting titans." Among his many accomplishments, he wrote the lyrics for the musical "West Side Story," and the music and words for "Send in the Clowns." Click on the link above to access the article.
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    Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II
    (Canada Council of the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, 2021) Shternshis, Anna, Korolenko, Psoy, Rosenberg, Dan
    North American Jews have explored--and continue to explore--Yiddish language, literature, theater, and music. In this project, Anna Shternshis, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto, collaborated with artist, Psoy Korolenko and producer Dan Rosenberg, to resurrect the anti-fascist Yiddish songs created by holocaust victims. The songs, which documented Nazi atrocities, were discovered in an old Soviet archive. Yiddish Glory is an album of this resurrected music, enabling the public to hear "for the first time..hear the voices of the Soviet Jews who were thought to be silenced by Hitler and Stalin." Click on the link above to learn about the project, hear the music and see the lyrics, both in Yiddish and English transliteration.
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    You Don't Bring Me Flowers
    (YouTube, 2014-05-01) Diamond, Neil; Streisand, Barbra
    A performance by Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand of their hit song, "You Don't Bring Me Flowers." The song was written by Marilyn and Alan Bergman and Neil Diamond. Click on the link above to listen and see the YouTube video. Click on the first link below to see our entry on Neil Diamond. Click on the second link below for our entry on Barbra Streisand.
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    Aaron Copland Collection
    (Library of Congress Music Division, 2020) Library of Congress
    The Music Division of the Library of Congress has a collection devoted to Aaron Copland. It includes photographs, articles and essays he wrote, his notated musical scores, his correspondence, etc. Click on the link above to view the collection. For NAJC's entry of the Encyclopedia Britannica's overview of Copland's work and his significance. The next link leads to NAJC's entry for a documentary on YouTube on Copland's musical works.
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    Keeping Score | Aaron Copland and the American Sound (FULL DOCUMENTARY AND CONCERT)
    (YouTube, 2020-03-19) San Francisco Symphony; Thomas, Michael Tilson
    This is a full length documentary of the work of Aaron Copland and its significance to American music. The documentary illustrates how Copland explored the widely varied musical styles and influences of which the American musical experience is made. This YouTube video also includes a full length performance of Copland's Appalachian Spring by the San Francisco Symphony. Click on the link above to see the documentary. The first link below is to the NAJC's entry to an overview of the work and significance of Copland's work in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The second link is to NAJC's entry for a collection devoted to Aaron Copland at the Library of Congress.
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    Aaron Copland: American Composer
    (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2020-11-28) Machlis, Joseph
    Aaron Copland was a well-known American composer whose work explored distinctly American themes and genres. Click on the link above to read the Encyclopedia Britannica's discussion of Copland's prolific work. Click on the first link below for a full length YouTube documentary on the work and significance of Aaron Copland.
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    Sophie Tucker
    (Jewish Women's Archive, 2009-03-20) Borden, Anne
    This article describes the career of Sophie Tucker, an international vaudeville star, who performed for over fifty years. She performed in both Yiddish and English. Her most well-known song was "My Yiddishe Momme,” which achieved broad popularity. Some of her numbers were considered very racy, and many of her performances directly challenged "age, size, and gender stereotypes of women’s sexuality, " but they were "couched in the humor that provided an antidote to puritanism." Click on the link above to read the article.
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    The Last Folksinger
    (Rolling Stone, 2019-10-10) Browne, David
    In part, a biographic article about the folksinger, known as Ramblin' Jack Elliott, this article discusses Elliott's musical career, his widely-varied musical friendships with Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, Pete Seeger, Odetta, Johnny Cash, among many others, and he impact he has had on other musicians. The article includes several videos of Elliott performing with Seeger, Cash, Bob Weir, and a solo performance of Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice Its Alright." Click on the link to read the article.