Music

Why So Many Jews Love the Band Phish

by Gabe Friedman, JTA | May 22, 2019 | Arts & Life, Music, The Arts

(JTA) — Gary Stein remembers the first time someone played a Phish song for him in high school. It was “Divided Sky,” an intricate 11-minute tune that shows off the group’s diverse jam rock chops. Stein, who’s now a 30-year-old history doctoral student living in Los...

Vampire Weekend’s ‘This Life’ Music Video Invites the Viewer to a Passover Seder

by Gabe Friedman, JTA | May 21, 2019 | Arts & Life, Music, The Arts

(JTA) — What would a Vampire Weekend Passover seder look like? The indie band’s new music video gives a hint. The new video for “This Life,” a song off its recently released album “Father of the Bride,” spends most of its final two minutes showing scenes from a seder...

Madonna Refuses to Cancel Eurovision Appearance

by JTA | May 14, 2019 | Art, Arts & Life, Music, Performing Arts, The Arts

Pop icon Madonna has announced that she will not cancel her Eurovision Song Contest appearance, despite calls for a boycott of Israel. The “Material Girl,” 60, reportedly is scheduled to perform at the Eurovision finals on Saturday night, May 18, in Tel...

Joan ‘Yonina’ Miller Enriches the Lives of Others Through Her Music, Poetry and Teaching

by Jolene Carr | May 10, 2019 | Arts & Life, Music, Performing Arts, The Arts

It took only a single piano lesson for Joan “Yonina” Miller, then 10, to know that she wanted a career in music. Now an accomplished pianist, music teacher and composer, as well as a published author, Miller, who resides at Weinberg Manor East in Northwest Baltimore,...

Quick 5 (Plus): Ex-Eagle Don Felder

by Simone Ellin, Associate Editor | May 9, 2019 | Arts & Life, Music

If anyone knows what life in the fast lane is really like, it’s Don Felder. After nearly six decades in the music business, Felder — who played lead guitar for the iconic band The Eagles from 1974 to 2001 and co-wrote their anthem “Hotel...

Leonard Bernstein’s Daughter to Speak at Sinai Event

by Simone Ellin, Associate Editor | May 7, 2019 | Arts & Life, Books, Music, Performing Arts, The Arts

What’s it like to live in the shadow of arguably the most celebrated composer/conductor of the 20th century? In her new book “Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein” (HarperCollins), Jamie Bernstein offers an intimate and intriguing portrait of her late...

A Former Jewish Punk Rocker Wrote an Acclaimed Novel About Holocaust Memory

by Curt Schleier, JTA | Apr 4, 2019 | Arts & Life, Books, Music, The Arts

(JTA) — At first glance, Bram Presser looks more like a punk rocker than a sensitive novelist. He has two big lip piercings, a few scraggly dreadlocks and a quirky beard only under his chin line. And, yes, Presser, 43, was the lead singer and songwriter of Yidcore, an...

Guitarist Adam Stoler Pulls Some Strings for ‘Come From Away’

by Alan Feiler, Editor-in-Chief | Apr 4, 2019 | Arts & Life, Fun, Music, Performing Arts, The Arts

To reference an old Counting Crows tune penned by lead singer (and Baltimore native) Adam Duritz, Adam Stoler is stranded “somewhere in middle America.” Omaha, to be precise. (Which happens to be the title of the aforementioned Counting Crows song.) “Yeah, it’s pretty...

With a Songbook in His Heart

by Simone Ellin, Associate Editor | Mar 21, 2019 | Arts & Life, Music, Performing Arts

Singer, pianist, music revivalist Michael Feinstein performs at the Gordon Center in April. Does Michael Feinstein ever sleep? That’s what we asked ourselves after perusing his resume in preparation for the following interview. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how the...

Durand Jones & the Indications Features a Time Keeper with Charm City Connections

by Aliza Friedlander | Mar 17, 2019 | Arts & Life, Music

A few years ago, Aaron Frazer and his comrades in the band then known simply as The Indications never expected their weekly, homegrown “Sunday Soul” jams to lead to big-league professional gigs. “In the year leading up to our first show, we spent every Sunday writing...