Attendees should expect the eclectic at the 11th annual Sephardic Music Festival (SMF), which this month comes to Los Angeles for a second consecutive year.
Singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb has just released an original Chanukah song called \”Light.\”
There are assorted good reasons to program a klezmer night around Chanukah, and brisk ticket sales is only one of them. “Klezmer is a hugely important part of the Jewish language and culture,” said Dale Franzen, director of the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, in assessing the Eastern European music genre that touches on political and cultural themes.
If you like to laugh and hear happy Chanukah songs, then this is the show for you. It will be a special night of funny people, including Stephanie Blum, Jimmy Brogan and Mark Schiff. Hosted by Kenny Ellis, who has long made it a mission to marry the cantor and the comic within, there will be nods to his top-rated CD, “Hanukkah Swings!” Make the sixth night of Chanukah the best night.
The closer we get to candle-lighting time, the more we warm to sounds of the season. Of course, there is no rule that every note of every song must be to-the-letter traditional (or even particularly Jewish), as a handful of new and recent releases demonstrate. As you’re preparing to spin the dreidel, give some of these gems a spin.
A dozen members of Kol Sephardic Choir stood in a semicircle, clutching songbooks as they rehearsed the lyrics of “Quando el Rey Nimrod.” Halfway through the Ladino folk song, music director Avi Avliav held his hands up and told the group to stop.
December always brings a torrent of Christmas-themed recordings by musical artists of all stripes. If you’re at all serious about longevity in a recording career, you record an album of holiday music — the sooner, the better.
When musician Ken Elkinson began receiving kudos for his Christmas album, he knew it was time to return to his roots.
There’s so many Christmas songs out there, I wanted to give the Jewish kids something to be proud of.
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