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Music and Justice Concert, featuring Dave Brubeck’s “The Gates of Justice”
February 14, 2023
Update: The Music and Justice concert has endedWe are excited to partner with the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience to produce Music and Justice; a three-day event centered around a concert performance of The Gates of...
Hanukkah Giveaway: Brubeck live event, music & memorabilia (Update: Giveaway has ended)
December 6, 2022
Update: This giveaway has concluded. Thank you for your participation!Dave Brubeck, who passed away 10 years ago, was a champion of social justice, using jazz as an instrument of activism in the service of unity. Among his most powerful works,...
Let's L'Chaim Live! — Fiddler Experience GIVEAWAY
September 13, 2022
This Rosh Hashanah, let’s raise a toast “to our prosperity, to good health and happiness, and most important… to life!”The last two years have felt like an endless series of isolated Sunrises and quarantined Sunsets. Returning to some level of...
Celebrating Lukas Foss at 100
August 16, 2022
Lukas Foss (1922–2009) was a bit of an iconoclast as a composer. He was so interested in the new that he never hewed too closely to any one creative school, and was too experimental to cultivate an identifiable style. “I...
Celebrating Leo Kraft’s 100th: New Oral History and Spotify Playlist
July 21, 2022
Though not a household name, composer Leo Kraft (1922–2014) was a significant force on New York’s new music scene from the mid-20th century to well into the 21st. His compositions were performed and recorded by such premier ensembles as the...
Introducing the Milken Archive Data Dashboard
June 13, 2022
What does Jewish music look like? It’s not the most obvious question. But for the past two years, we have been collaborating on a research project on recorded Jewish music with our partners at the Lowell Milken Center for Music...
Musical Echoes of Ukraine in the American Jewish Experience
May 5, 2022
Leonard Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony is arguably his most important concert work and most profound musical expression of his crisis of faith. But its linchpin is actually a variation on Hasidic legend from Ukraine in which a rebbe confronts God for...
Welcoming the Stranger This Passover - With Generosity and Music (and Tovah!)
March 30, 2022
The theme of “welcoming the stranger” is central in the observance and celebration of Passover. This year, the tradition has newfound resonance, even as it hearkens back to the time when the Jewish people were slaves in Egypt and then...
William Schuman’s “Judith”: How a Ballet Score Helped Save an Orchestra
February 16, 2022
Like many of his contemporaries, composer William Schuman harbored a love for American jazz and popular music. In fact, before pursuing composition studies in his twenties, it is estimated that he wrote nearly 150 popular songs. Though Schuman became a...
The Malavsky Sisters: In Their Own Words
January 11, 2022
Cantor Samuel Malavsky was born in Russia in 1894. Like so many cantors of his generation, he learned the cantorial trade as a meshorer, or chorister. When he came to the U.S. at age twenty he was taken in by...
