Conversations: Words and Music from the American Jewish Experience

Dr. Jeremiah Lockwood, with Rokhl Kafrissen and Eléonore Biezunski

As Research Fellow for the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Dr. Jeremiah Lockwood has started a new blog, Conversations, that serves as an open process look into his work as an ethnographer and scholar of Jewish music. The blog has two main columns: The Kwartin Project, a serialized translation of Cantor Zawel Kwartin’s 1952 autobiography Mayn Lebn; and a recurring column titled “Dispatches from Brooklyn,” that offers reports on the life of the rich tapestry of the New York Jewish music scene. In this presentation he will be joined in conversation by two artists who have recently been profiled in “Dispatches”: Rokhl Kafrissen is a cultural critic, playwright and journalist who has made a recent foray into Yiddish songwriting; and Eléonore Bienzunski, singer, composer, band leader and sound archivist at YIVO. Lockwood will discuss with them their recent projects and initiate a conversation taking his analytical essays about their work as a starting point.

Please have a look at Conversations before this COZ session to have a better sense of the scope of the project, and to learn more about these artists and their work. https://schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/tag/milken-center-conversations/