April 17, 2024
Long considered a staple of both American and American Jewish music, Yehudi Wyner looms as large in the cultural imagination as any other composer of his era. He is also an ardent champion of the music of his father, Lazar Weiner, a celebrated composer of Jewish art songs, sacred, and choral music. As he approaches his 95th birthday, Wyner brings his decades of experience and insight to a weeklong artist residency at the UCLA Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience, where he will share his music—and that of his father—through performances, lectures, masterclasses, and more.
Register for the free concert on Sunday, May 5, beginning at 4PM PST through the link below.
Yehudi Wyner: A 95th Birthday Concert »
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A Passover (Playlist) Offering
Yehudi Wyner composed Passover Offering in 1959 as a quasi-programmatic work meant to “evoke the drama and sentiment” of the Passover story as opposed to its literal narrative. It is but one of a myriad of musical works included on our Passover playlist on Spotify, where it lives alongside mammoth works by Ernst Toch (Cantata of the Bitter Herbs), Max Helfman (Di naye hagode), Michael Shapiro (Variations on Eliahu hanavi), Sholom Secunda (Passover Seder Festival, featuring Richard Tucker), and many others.
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In Their Own Words: Yehudi Wyner
In this 1998 oral history interview with the Milken Archive, Yehudi Wyner discusses what it was like growing up in the shadow of his father and finding his own path as a composer. He also relates how a summer at a Jewish arts camp in California in the 1950s shaped the trajectory of his career.
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Remembering Maurice El Medioni (1928–2024)
Though he spent most of life working as a tailor, Maurice El Medioni was one of the most sought-after pianists in mid-20th century Algeria. Working with Arabic musicians, he pioneered a new kind of music by combining Sephardic song and Arabic musical traditions with American boogie-woogie and Latin jazz. The New York Times has this remembrance.
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