Clifford Odets burst onto Broadway in 1935, when three plays by the 29-year-old actor-writer — "Waiting for Lefty," "Awake and Sing" and "Paradise Lost" — opened in the same year.
Since the klezmer revival exploded a quarter century ago, the Ashkenazi musical tradition has experienced more variations than deli sandwiches. There has been klezmer-infused jazz, hip-hop, bluegrass and most any other permutation one can imagine. But as klezmer has morphed from shtetl to nightclub fare, one of the most unusual things it has added is women, said musician-scholar Yale Strom.\n\n\”Traditionally, the purveyors of Yiddish songs and culture were women, but that didn\’t occur outside the home,\” said Strom, author of \”The Book of Klezmer\” (Chicago Review Press, 2002). \”Women did not play in klezmer bands because of the Orthodox prohibition against hearing a woman\’s voice and because nice Jewish girls stayed home.\”
Today, \”Brundibar\” is experiencing a revival of sorts. It is the title and story of a new children\’s book written by Tony Kushner, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak (Hyperion Books for Children), and this weekend, the Jewish Community Foundation and the Dwight Stuart Youth Foundation sponsored Youth Opera Camp of Santa Monica College Conservatory will be performing the opera at the Miles Memorial Playhouse and Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Hippies, bellbottoms and Volkswagen Beetles aren\’t the only \’60s icons to resurface.
These days, Third and Fairfax is pure traffic mayhem. Bulldozers, big rigs and construction workers jam the city streets and block available driveways. Trying to park at Farmers Market, the historical market and eatery that has drawn locals and tourists for 68 years, is like entering a revolving door and not stopping. Not only is the Market going through a $45-million revival, but a new outdoor shopping mall, The Grove at Farmers Market, is being erected, for a projected March 15 opening, amidst a flurry of dissension and exhilaration.
Aaron Paley, 41, grew up living and breathing Yiddish.\nHis world was a community of leftist Jews who considered the radical Workmen\’s Circle the reichte, the right wing.
Note to future rabbis: If you want to make a lasting firstimpression with your congregants, nothing beats farm animals on thebimah. Just ask anyone at Temple Adat Shalom in West LosAngeles. It\’s been almost four months since Michael Resnick took overthere, and they\’re still talking about his goats.
Yvonne Sylva Maritza Josephine Kálmán, sixtyish,blond and glamorous, is named for all her father\’s favorite operettaheroines. So perhaps not surprisingly, she has dedicated much of herlife to seeing that her father\’s operettas have been performed allover the world.
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