Together, Riperton and Rudolph created music rooted in love, family and collaboration, including “Lovin’ You,” offering a beautiful example of Black and Jewish creative connection within American popular music.

The story of the song’s melody has ties to Jewish history and appearances in Eastern European, Sephardic, Egyptian, Iraqi, Turkish, and Indian popular song and liturgy. In this listening session, we will hear many of the different variations of the melody as performed by Jewish musicians and singers, including Naftule Brandwein, Hakki Obadia, Gloria Levy, and Eydie Gormé.

believed was possible when it came to drum sound punch and depth of the overall mix.

Schlitten used all of his many talents to capture iconic photographs of legends such as Thelonious Monk. John Coltrane, Bill Evans and Louis Armstrong, and classic recordings of jazz icons such as Sonny Stitt, Dexter Gordon, Yusef Lateef, Al Cohn and many others.

Barth has had extended collaborations with Steve Wilson, Luciana Souza, Steve Nelson, and Tony Bennett; and has performed with James Moody, Phil Woods, Freddie Hubbard, Tim Armacost, Tom Harrell, Luis Bonilla, Rene Marie, Adam Kolker, and Branford Marsalis. We will listen to a cross section of his very varied work, including collaborations with the clarinetist Anat Cohen, and discuss his improvisations and compositional techniques.

This curated listening session will trace his production across artists including Mobb Deep, Nas, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, Drake, and Griselda, highlighting his masterful ear for obscure samples, soulful loops, and gritty textures. The session will also spotlight Israeli Salad, his instrumental concept album built largely from samples of classic Israeli and Middle Eastern music, exploring how he transforms sounds from diverse musical traditions into innovative hip-hop.

Violinist (b. Baghdad ca. 1927) came to the U.S. in 1947 to study composition with avant-gardists Ernest Bloch and Roger Sessions at U.C. Berkeley and found work as a player in the Arab-American community of Brooklyn in the 1950s.

At the center of that story is Wendy Melvoin, Prince’s Jewish guitarist in The Revolution, whose musical contributions and family connections to the album offer a window into the collaborative relationships behind one of Prince’s most adventurous records.

Fromental Halévy’s "La Juive" (1835) was one of the nineteenth century’s most significant operas (and the only one) to place Jewish characters and Jewish life at the center of the operatic stage. The selected excerpts showcase both Halévy’s dramatic and vocal artistry and his engagement with questions of Jewish identity, religious difference, and persecution. Mieczysław Weinberg was a Polish-born Jewish composer who survived displacement and war before establishing his career in the Soviet Union. The selected excerpts from "The Passenger," his opera based on Holocaust testimony, explore memory, trauma, and survival. The listening session ends with the "Adagio" from his Cello Concerto, which reflects the Soviet Union’s anti-formalistic musical climate while incorporating clear allusions to synagogue practice. Together, these works trace two distinct Jewish composers across nearly 150 years, inviting listeners to consider how their distinctive musical styles voice identity, memory, persecution, and survival.

Why are so many Jews Deadheads? What is it about the music and culture of the Grateful Dead that has historically drawn Jews 'onto the bus?' Come and join us as we listen to some music, discuss, share some stories from the road, and maybe even come to some kind of shared understanding about why so many Deadheads are Jews.

overlap between the two explored by on many musicians from the New York “Downtown Scene” such as Frank London, Shelly Hirsh, and John Horn. We will finish up by checking in on today’s klezmer bands and see how those influences have and have not filtered down to some of the newest bands.