Review by Seth Rogovoy If I’m lucky, I stumble upon one new (or new to me) musical artist per year who captures my attention in such a way as to make me an instant fan and a believer that there are still musical discoveries to be made and new voices that can vie with…
Review by Seth Rogovoy Josh Waletzky, Passengers (Waletzky Music) Several decades into the Yiddish song revival – part and parcel of the overall revival of the Yiddish language, Yiddish culture, and klezmer music – we are now enjoying a full-fledged renaissance of creativity in the form of new works. Josh Waletzky is at…
The Principles of Uncertainty by John Heginbotham and Maira Kalman Jacob’s Pillow Dance Becket, Mass. August 26, 2017 Review by Seth Rogovoy (BECKET, Mass.) – The curtain came down this past weekend in the Doris Duke Theatre at Jacob’s Pillow Dance on the world premiere of “The Principles of Uncertainty,” a wild and wacky collaboration…
by Seth Rogovoy (CHATHAM and MILLBROOK, N.Y.) – Barbara Bonner, author of the award-winning Inspiring Generosity, will be signing copies of her new book, Inspiring Courage, at the Millbrook Literary Festival on Saturday, May 20, and at the Chatham Bookstore on Sunday, May 21, at 2pm. Inspiring Courage is a timely call to action…
To say that it was well worth the 11-year wait for “Avocet,” the follow-up to Jennifer Kimball’s terrific sophomore effort, “Oh Hear Us,” is at once to state the obvious – I mean, what other choice did we have but to wait? – but also to celebrate the arrival of a new recording by one…
Frank London is an alchemist of ingenious trad-rad fusions – always with one foot in the Old World and the other in the avant-garde. On “Astro-Hungarian Jewish Music” he conjures up a truly spectral blend of Hungarian Jewish folk music with downtown punk and jazz, creating something entirely new and surprising, yet utterly logical and…
(AMHERST, Mass.) – Photographer Marisa Scheinfeld will speak about her years-long project documenting the ruins of the once vital resorts in the Catskill Mountains and sign copies of her new book, “The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland” (Cornell University Press) at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., on Sunday, April…
by Seth Rogovoy This article was originally published in Hadassah Magazine in the April/May 2015 issue. Subsequently, I was awarded a 2016 Simon Rockower Award from the American Jewish Press Association for excellence in arts and criticism for this piece. ARTIST OF THE YEAR, songwriter of the year, and “fan choice” of the year. Katy Perry?…
by Seth Rogovoy “My Life as an Animal” (Triquarterly Books) by Laurie Stone features a series of interconnected and comic stories that blur the lines between memoir, fiction, and cultural criticism. Through the book’s impressionistic style, it builds a narrative via seemingly unrelated anecdotes and observations. Its tantalizing challenge to readers is that what is…
by Seth Rogovoy Perhaps best known as a singer, actress, and theater director, “The Last Survivor and Other Modern Jewish Plays” makes the case that Eleanor Reissa’s playwriting is perhaps her strongest mode of expression. These six plays are rich and full of life’s learned lessons. While forged out of the horrors of the Holocaust…
