National Endowment for the Arts celebrates master folk and traditional artists by awarding fellowships each year. This year, Yiddish and klezmer musician Michael Alpert was one of the 2015 recipients.http://arts.gov/news/2015/nea-announces-recipients-nation%E2%80%99s-highest-award-folk-and-traditional-arts

The 2015 National Heritage Fellows will be honored in Washington, DC, at an awards ceremony at the Library of Congress on Thursday, October 1, 2015 and a free concert on Friday, October 2, 2015 at 8:00 p.m. at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium. Both events are free and open to the public. Concert tickets are first come, first served and will be available later this summer. The concert will also be webcast live at arts.gov. More information about these events will be available this fall. – See more at: http://arts.gov/news/2015/nea-announces-recipients-nation%E2%80%99s-highest-award-folk-and-traditional-arts

For more information about Michael Alpert and his music, see: http://www.michaelalpert.org/…
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The San Diego Jewish Men’s Choir is proud to announce that they are recent Sliver Medal
Winners of the prestigious Global Music Awards, for their album,
“Heritage.” Heritage was released in January to wonderful reviews
and can be purchased on Amazon.com and Itunes, as well as
through website at SDJMC.org

A percentage of all sales of this CD go towards providing FREE
CD’s to Jewish libraries, senior centers, and schools, so that this beautiful music will be available for generations to come.

You can hear clips of this music and read reviews of it by clicking
on the album picture on San Diego JMC website.

The 2013 Jewish American Heritage Month honorees are Sy Brenner and Yale Strom.
http://newsle.com/article/0/80167148/

Yale Strom is no stranger to the Jewish music world. He’s currently serving as the artist-in-residence for the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University. Strom is best known not only for his performance but for his films and books.

“In 1982 the National Endowment for the Arts established the NEA National Heritage Awards as a way of honoring American folk artists for their contributions to our national cultural mosaic. Modelled after the Japanese “National Living Treasures” concept, the idea began with Bess Lomax Hawes, then director of the Folk Arts Program…. The NEA annually awards one-time-only National Heritage Fellowships for master folk and traditional artists. These fellowships are intended to recognize the recipients’ artistic excellence and support their continuing contributions to our nation’s traditional arts heritage.” This year, Andy Statman, klezmer clarinetist and mandolinist, has been named a fellow along with 8 other Americans in the Folk Arts for his life time of achievement in folk music, including Jewish klezmer music. A full biographical page appears on the NEA website: http://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/fellows/fellow.php?id=2012_09&type=bio
Congratulations to Andy!…
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Vira Lozinsky has been nominated for an Independent Music Award 2012 in the World/Traditional category for her new album of Yiddish songs Wunderweg — Wondrous Way. Winners will be determined by a panel of 77 influential artist and industry judges including Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, Suzanne Vega, Joshua Redman, Tori Amos, Michael Franti, Bettye LaVette, Del McCoury.
The results will be announced soon, in April 2012.

Read All about Elaine’s award:
http://www.nea.gov/honors/heritage/fellows/fellow.php?id=2007_12
Here’s the interview with Elaine Watts after her being named the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow:
http://www.nea.gov/honors/heritage/fellows/interview.php?id=2007_12

Founded in 1948, a kibbutz choir called Givatron has been named to receive the Israel Prize, announced Education Minister Yuli Tamir on Sunday. The Israel Prize will be awarded on Israel’s Independence Day. Founded in Kibbutz Geva, the choir’s generations of singers and musicians have produced 26 albums. For many Israelis, their music became ’emblematic of modern Zionism.’ The Israel Prize Committee judges announced that this year’s lifetime achievement award would go to the Givatron because “In a world dominated by fads …the band and their repertoire have been for a long time a unique and significant phenomenon to their young listeners, as well as previous generations. A thousand singing groups and bands followed in its tracks and have enriched Israeli culture – its heritage.”

Here’s a letter just received from the musical group Yuval Ron about the Oscar awarded last night:

Dear All,
I am thrilled to share with you the news that tonight we won an Oscar
for Best Live Action Short FIlm for the film West Bank Story,
directed by Ari Sandel.
This is a great victory for us as the film is a musical and the music
(the songs and the score which I composed) has a central and very
important role in the film (as in any musical).
I am so glad for this award because this film was created to revive
hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The film was
successful in bringing out the humanity in both sides, and
highlighted the courageous few who overcome the bias, follow true
love and struggle for peace.…
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If you want to know more about the album Wonder Wheel (JMG Records, JMG 18033-02, 2006) performed by that incredible Jewish band, the Klezmatics, — that just won a Grammy in World Music– there’s a great article on the Klezmershack that explains a lot about the project.

http://klezmershack.com/articles/cherlin/klezmatics/

Another article about the album appeared in The Forward
which you can read about online http://www.forward.com/articles/where-the-borscht-sounds-like-the-sea/

A Special Happy Birthday to Ari Davidow! Ari is author of the KlezmerShack.com
For over 10 years Ari has been providing music reviews, listings and articles on every area of Jewish music, especially klezmer music. His website gets top ratings from JMWC. Thanks, Ari !!

Yehudi Wyner, composer and faculty member at Brandeis for many years until
his recent retirement, won the Pulitzer Prize in music yesterday for his
piano concerto ”Chiavi in mano.” The concerto was premiered in Boston at
the Boston Symphony Orchestra concert last year. Wyner is the first
Boston-based composer to win for a BSO work since Walter Piston in 1948.

Wyner is the son of Lazar Weiner, and is a well known composer in the Boston
area and internationally. Yehudi was born in 1929 in Calgary, Alberta, but
grew up in NYC. He studied at Julliard, Yale (with Richard Donovan and Paul
Hindemith), and Harvard (with Walter Piston). In 1953, he won the Rome Prize
in Composition. He taught at Yale from 1963-77, and served as head of the
composition faculty there.…
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Marion Lignana Rosenberg, a writer for Newsday, has named the CD by Brave Old World, “Song of the Lodz Ghetto” as “the must-have CD of 2005” She states: “This haunting work interweaves songs of hope and defiance from Lodz, where some 250,000 Jews awaited slaughter during World War II, with musical glosses by klezmer and new Jewish music band Brave Old World. Plaintive yet also a kick in the teeth of death, it is the must-have CD of 2005.” Rosenberg also has a blog where she links to some really great articles about the CD, not the least of which is a phenomenal review by Ruth Gruber in the International Herald Tribune last Nov 8, at http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/07/opinion/trmusic.php#
It’s gratifying to see the mainstream press starting to catch on to this great musical collection.…
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Veteran producer David Frost has won a GRAMMY for Classical Producer of the Year. Frost won the GRAMMY for five CDs he produced for the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music, all of which were released in 2004.
“It’s certainly a great honor,” said Frost at the 47th Annual GRAMMY
Awards in Los Angeles on February 13. “I accept this along with the
Milken Archive, and especially Lowell Milken for creating the Milken
Archive, as well as Neil Levin and Paul Schwendener-and Naxos for
distributing this wonderful and unique recording project.”

The five Milken Archive recordings for which Frost won his GRAMMY are:
* Bruce Adolphe [8.559413]
* Dave Brubeck [8.559414]
* Genesis Suite [8.559442]
* Jewish Operas, Vol. 1 [8.559424]
* Yehudi Wyner [8.559423]

The Wyner CD was also nominated in the category of Best Small Ensemble Performance (with or without Conductor).…
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Meira Warshauer‘s nice online newsletter announced that she won the Miriam Gideon Prize.
“Yishakeyni” has been honored with 1st Place in the 2004 Miriam Gideon Prize from the International Association for Women in Music. The piece is a setting of the first four verses of “Song of Songs,” the great love song of the Bible. It invites the listener into a realm of human and Divine love which transcends boundaries.
Meira’s newsletter is available at http://www.jamesarts.com/releases/feb05/MW_nws_020504.htm