Hassidic Funk Band Zusha on a Mission to Transcend Labels

By Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman for Jewish Voice NY

There’s no one label for the deep, spiritual, funky, fun, and eclectic tunes of one of the hottest new Hassidic funk bands, Zusha.

“What are we? What are you?” asks band member and guitarist Zachary Goldschmiedt, 24, over coffee in Jerusalem with this reporter. Sitting with percussionist Elisha Mlotek, 25, and vocalist Shlomo Gaisin, 24, the latter sipping a berry smoothie with a shot of hot pepper, the members of the New York-based band spoke about music, religion, and life.

“The only assumption we make about people is that they are all beautiful and they all have something to teach us. Who are we? We are listeners. We are Jewish,” Goldschmiedt tells JNS.org. “Labels make us uncomfortable.”

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The Israeli Composer Who Writes Indian Muslim Music and Collaborates With Radiohead's Guitarist

Shye Ben-Tzur had been composing Indian devotional music for over a decade before he was a subject in the Paul Thomas Anderson documentary 'Junun.'

Gabe Friedman for Haaretz

JTA - For most musicians working in the underappreciated genre of world music, recording an album with Jonny Greenwood, the guitarist of the famed English rock band Radiohead, would be something of a pipe dream.

And what about having that experience filmed by acclaimed director Paul Thomas Anderson (“There Will Be Blood,” “The Master,” “Boogie Nights”)? That would be the icing on a very delicious artistic cake.

Israeli composer and singer Shye Ben-Tzur was lucky enough to make this incredible cake — and now he’s eating it, too.

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Israeli Rocker’s Christmas and New Year’s Tracks Go Viral (VIDEO)

From the algemeiner.com

An Israeli singer’s Christmas tune has gone viral on social media, prompting him to release a New Year’s track that has also attracted much attention.

On Christmas eve, Lazer Lloyd — known as “Israel’s King of Blues Rock” — posted a video of himself playing the guitar and singing an original song he wrote called “X-Mas Blues“ on Facebook. The clip drew more than 300,000 views and hundreds of comments. The viral hit also garnered the musician more than 15,000 new followers in less than a week.

Continue reading.http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/01/06/israeli-rockers-christmas-and-new-years-tracks-go-viral-video/

Why We Should Applaud New York Philharmonic's Next Director

By Benjamin Ivry for The Jewish Daily Forward   

On January 27, after the New York Philharmonic named Jaap van Zweden as its next music director starting in 2018, an outcry from local journalists and international bloggers decried the decision. One blogger confidently proclaimed: “New York Philharmonic appoints the wrong music director.” These premature judgments based on insufficient evidence ignore the fact that in his demonstrated knowledge and appreciation of Jewish ritual and cultural history, van Zweden is a fine match for music-loving Manhattanites. He was a protégé of Leonard Bernstein, who decades ago urged van Zweden, once an orchestral violinist, to seriously embrace conducting. In return, van Zweden became a Bernstein devotee, prepping for a 2015 performance of Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, “Kaddish” with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra by filming a meditative visit, wearing a kippa, to Amsterdam’s venerable Portuguese Synagogue. In another video, about a work by Shostakovich reflecting the sufferings of World War II, van Zweden explains how his grandmother fought in the anti-Nazi resistance and “killed a lot of Germans,” which he assured her was the “right thing to do” at the time, although decades after the fact, she had reservations about having taken so many human lives. Would that the Philharmonic resolved to rename the revamped Avery Fisher Hall in honor of van Zweden’s admirable grandmother instead of the unheroic media mogul David Geffen who merely forked over the loot for the renovation.

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Giving Voice To Cantorate’s ‘Golden Age’

George Robinson, Special to the Jewish Week

He’s like a Mississippi bluesman trying to keep alive the authentic Delta sound for a new generation.

Jack Mendelson, 69, one of the most celebrated cantors of his generation, has a true pedigree in hazonos, the musical tradition of Ashkenazi Jewish worship exemplified by the great voices of the “golden age” cantorate. As a boy, he sang in the children’s choir of the legendary Cantor Moshe Koussevitzky. Whether Mendelson is on the bima or not — he retired recently after nearly three decades at Temple Israel of White Plains — he feels a responsibility to keep that endangered tradition alive.

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