Israel may be a small country, but when it comes to classical music, it’s a powerhouse. From his position on the board of New York’s Mannes School of Music, David P. Goldman has had the chance to witness Israeli prominence in the field firsthand. In an effort to get a better handle on the phenomenon, ...

The teenage cellist has the cheeks of a cherub and the peroxide hair of Lady Gaga. She arranges a frilly black Victorian gown around a folding chair and tunes her instrument, taking the A from her pianist, a chubby boy a year or so younger. The two of them would resemble Wednesday and Pugsley Addams, ...

If you follow the pop charts, you might have thought that Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Ke$ha are vying for the title of 2010’s biggest summer star. You’d have been wrong.
Last Tuesday, Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman presented a 1938 Yiddish film, The Singing Blacksmith, at a screening in Brooklyn. The singing blacksmith in ...

When John Zorn invited the Israeli trombonist and composer Rafi Malkiel to record an album exploring his Jewish roots for Zorn’s Tzadik label, Malkiel was delighted. He was also stumped.
“I don’t know how to do Jewish music,” Malkiel told me; which is ironic, because he seems to know how to do everything else, from straightahead ...

The six-person band Yiddish Princess takes the sounds of ’80s rock—from the ethereal vocalizations of Kate Bush to the pounding drums and guitar riffs of Bon Jovi—and marries them with Yiddish songs. Some of the songs are Yiddish poems; some are original works by Sarah Gordon, the band’s lead singer. Gordon comes to the Yiddish ...

When asked about what led him to the Jewish village of Putti, in Uganda, Mike Cohen, a New York-based woodwind player, says “coffee,” which is not how you expect a conversation about a recording—in this case, When I Wake Up: The Music of Putti, a disc of songs by the Abayudaya—to begin.
Then again, the Abayudaya are ...

Harlem’s Apollo Theater was once a whites-only burlesque house, until the city shut down the circuit in 1934. That’s when Frank Schiffman, a promoter specializing in what was then called “race music,” bought the place. He recruited young talents like Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, James Brown, and Billie Holiday—many of whom got their ...