Music

Grapes of Roth Bear Jewish Whine?

By:

M.J. Fine, JE Feature

Straight outta Morrisville, Pa., comes rapper Asher Roth, who released "Asleep in the Bread Aisle" on April 20. If you don't immediately grasp the significance of that date (during Passover), then you're not the pothead poet's target audience. So much mainstream music -- not just hip-hop, but pop and country, too -- appeals to the lowest common denominator. People want...

Music

Attuned to the Uptown Piano Man

By:

Michael Elkin

Matthew Friedman -- ideally groomed to play the Piano Man, Billy Joel, on Broadway? Just ask the groom himself. "Billy invited me to perform at his wedding," says the uptown guy from Long Island -- just like Joel -- who keyed into the keyboards at the 2004 wedding of Joel and Katie Lee. "I played six hours straight -- I...

Music

A Bridge Over Troubled Water ... uh, Make That Sand

By:

Cantor David F. Tilman, JE Feature

A Bridge Over Troubled Water ... uh, Make That Sand Udi Bar David, 50-year-old veteran cellist in the Philadelphia Orchestra, has developed a far-reaching parallel musical life as the founder, president and artistic director of Intercultural Journeys, whose mission is "to promote understanding among people of diverse cultures through dialogue and the presentation of world-class performances in music, poetry and...

Music

Birthday Bash: Come Blow Out the Candles With Rami Kleinstein

By:

Michael Elkin

Recording star Rami Kleinstein made the move from his native New York at age 8 in 1970 to the desert storm that was the Mideast at a time when things, according to Dylan, were a'changin'. "I grew up influenced by the Beatles, a time of flowers in your hair -- and you take that with you," he says. Kleinstein's take...

Music

Freedmans, married to each other and to music, celebrate a truly golden time

By:

Marsha Bryan Edelman, JE Feature

Like most couples who celebrate the milestone of a golden wedding anniversary, Bob and Molly Freedman have spent their lives accumulating children, grandchildren, dear friends and fond memories. Unlike most others, they also spent the years collecting Jewish music, a collection which, since 1997, has been known as the Robert and Molly Freedman Jewish Sound Archive at the University of...