My Converstion with Tepper in TOAR

Empty concert hall.

A recent discussion I had with Aryeh Tepper has just appeared in The Omni-American Review. It is titled: “Deep Listening in a Chaotic Soundscape: Thinking about Music with Dan Asia.”  I sometimes speak on the relationship between Judaism and Classical Music. I often start with the following comment: I only have three small goals. The …

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On Recent Comments About Opera

Over the last few weeks, there has been a simmering ruckus about opera and ballet, the state of affairs with the Washington National Opera, and some musings on contemporary operas. Timothée Chalamet put opera and ballet down. He said he wouldn’t want to work in ballet or opera, because these fields are ones where people …

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If Not Now, When?

A Review of The Armed Jew by Adam Fuller Professor Adam Fuller’s book, The Armed Jew couldn’t be timelier. As Hamas seeks to find accommodation with Israel through Trump’s peace plan, it is a reminder of their butchery of October 7th, 2023, with the massacre of over 1000, many of them young people, and most …

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Deep Listening: Exploring Music with Daniel Asia

This interview originally appears on American Sephardi. Please visit their website here. The American Sephardi Federation’s Sephardi Ideas Monthly (SIM) by Dr. Aryeh Tepper is a continuing series of essays and interviews from the rich, multi-dimensional world of Sephardi thought and culture that is delivered to your inbox every month. Daniel Asia is an award-winning …

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A Review of Wynton Marsalis’s Moving to Higher Ground

The artistic and creative personae of a performer or composer is a manifestation of his entire life experience, everything that he has listened to, and his basic constitution, and his personality. Whereas in the hard or social sciences we care little about the person who discovers a truth, because it is “out there,” with the arts, we wish to know about the painter or composer, because it comes from “inside,” it is of “them.”

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Front and Center: The Place for Classical Music in the Curriculum

Music in the academy is at risk. The decline in its status, presence, and reach can be traced to the cultural shifts beginning in the 1960s. Western classical music—with its unassailable history of accomplishment and undeniable pedagogical, cultural, and spiritual significance—has fallen prey to the assault on standards and hierarchies embodied by the era’s ethos of: “Hey-hey, ho-ho, Western Civ. has got to go.”

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Strums and tuttis: Beaser’s music for guitar and orchestra

Through his partnership with Eliot Fisk, Beaser has made a major and lasting contribution to the solo guitar repertoire with numerous pieces including “Notes on a Southern Sky.” Placed after the “Concerto,” it might be considered a lengthy encore. The work was one of Beaser’s first to look at folk music, in this case, that of Venezuela.

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