Composer Marvin Hamlisch, who earned critical acclaim and popularity for a prolific output of dozens of motion-picture scores and shows including \”The Way We Were,\” \”The Sting\” and \”A Chorus Line,\” has died in Los Angeles. He was 68.
The High Holidays provide some of the greatest frissons one can experience in a synagogue. And the music is, indeed, a big part of those rising chills.
John Rauch, the founder of The Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity, whose recent death at the age of 75 is a blow to the Los Angeles Jewish cultural scene; Barbara \”Bobbi\” Asimow died Aug. 22 of cancer at 63.
Was Richard Wagner, Hitler\’s favorite composer, a classical anti-Semite and proto-Nazi or has conventional assumption given him a bad rap?
While mainly honoring the composers who were persecuted or perished during the Holocaust, \”Silenced Voices\” will also feature the works of Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler, whose \”degenerate\” music was banned by the Nazis.
Film composer Elmer Bernstein, who died last week at the age of 82, was born in New York, the son of immigrants from Ukraine and the Austro-Hungarian empire.
On the cover of Jack Bielan\’s new CD, \”From the Heart of a Jewish Soul,\” a pianist plays as his keyboard expands and spirals heavenward. Below, the glow from two yahrtzeit candles joins the keys soaring into the clouds.
The number \”three\” doesn\’t play an especially important part in Jewish lore and customs. But the pre-High Holy Day musical rush brought to my desk several trios of related recordings, so it\’s fitting to deal with them in groups of threes.
You may know Jonathan Elias as the guy who composed the music to Chaplin and 9 1/2 Weeks. Or most of the songs on the Yes album, Union. Or the ditty to the original MTV promo, the one where the astronaut plants the MTV flag on the moon.
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