Alphabetical Index to Website Entries: R
Ann Rachel
Children's performer, composer and folk musician living in New Hampshire, with over twenty years of experience living in Israel. Her website includes links to folk music culture in Israel.
Rahel Jaskow
Rahel Jaskow produced a CD of Jewish Sabbath songs in Hebrew and English. Day of Rest was released in November 2000 and subsequently won the 2001 Just Plain Folks music award for best CD in the ethnic music category. Her bio states that after majoring in English at the University of Rochester, Jaskow moved to Jerusalem, Israel. "She serves as a prayer leader for the women's prayer groups Shirat Sara and Women of the Wall, and also participates regularly in the Leader Minyan as a Torah reader." Ms. Jaskow's voice quality is rich, enchanting and extremely appealing as an Israeli-style "traditional folk" artist. She performs a cappella using recorded versions of herself to create a small group effect.
http://www.geocities.com/raheljaskow/
Radio Hazak: Israeli Music on the Web
Information on artists, news and reviews, and a message board about Israeli pop music. To learn "what's new, what's hot, and what's classic"
about Israeli music. Produced by Larry Yudelson, an enthusiast in the United States. Useful for some English translations of Israeli songs and following
the interests of young people.
http://www.radiohazak.com/
Raizie Benguigui
Raizie is a singer who has fused traditional lyrics with modern rhythms, singing in four languages (English, Hebrew, French and Spanish). Raizie has
performed for women audiences in Venezuela, Israel and Canada and has produced a CD for Jewish women.
http://www.raizie.com/
Shulamit Ran
A widely acclaimed composer and pianist who studied in Israel and the United States and now works internationally, including the US. Ms. Ran was born in Tel Aviv. While primarily a classical musician, Ms. Ran has written several works both on Jewish themes, including an opera The Dybbuk, and and works with Jewish musical content, including klezmer-influenced music and several liturgical settings. Ms. Ran won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991. Her music is published by Theodore Presser which has an excellent page dedicated to her music, her publications, her biography and a discography. It includes a photo.
http://www.presser.com/composers/ran.html
Judith Raskin
American soprano and teacher. Born June 21, 1928 and died December 21, 1984. Graduated from Smith College in 1949. She received the Marian Anderson Award (1952 and 1953. Joined the New York City Opera in 1959. Debuted at the Metropolitcan Opera in 1962 and continued singing opera there until 1972. She was on the faculty of Manhattan School of Music, Mannes College and the 92nd Street Y. Raskin championed new music and often recorded works of contemporary composers, including the works of Miriam Gideon.
Judith Raskin bio
Zlata Razdolina
Composer born in Russia and immigrated to Israel. Website includes information on compositions, recordings, and link to a brief biography.
http://www.igc.apc.org/ddickerson/zlata-razdolina/index.html
RebbeSoul
"The exciting six-piece, world beat band, featuring vocals, balalaika,
guitars, bass, keyboards, drums, and exotic percussion, plays material
from their three CDs plus traditional and new songs."
http://www.rebbesoul.com/
Jalda Rebling
Born in Amsterdam. Daughter of Lin Jaldati. Singer.
Specializes in Jewish song.
Steve Reich
The New Music Box archive biography of Steve Reich includes several transcripts of interviews with Reich, full text, as well as a biography, list of works, recordings and links.
http://www.newmusicbox.org/archive/firstperson/reich/bio.html
Rejuvenating Heritage--KEOS,Bryan, Texas
Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, English Jewish music, comedy, folklore and theater are featured on this show by Michael Sherman in Bryan, Texas at radio station KEOS-FM.
http://stat.tamu.edu/~sherman/KEOS/Klezmershow.html
Renanot Institute for Jewish Music
Renanot Institute is dedicated to rescuing music of people "whose musical traditions are being forgotten." The website includes over 300 items of Jewish music and over 3,000 songs and poems and is sponsored by Shema Yisrael Torah Network. It is located at the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem, Israel. The Institute houses a collection of Jewish musical instruments from various traditions. The website provides access to a catalogue for information about and purchase of scores and cassettes for Jewish liturgy in Ashkenaz, Sepharad, Moroccan and Yemenite traditions including the Shabbat and festival liturgies, the parashat havshavua and even entire the cantillation of the entire Torah.
http://www.renanot.co.il/
Lucas Richman
orLucas Richman's Orchestral Compositions on Jewish Themes
An accomplished conductor and composer, Lucas Richman is Assistant Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and a cover conductor for the New York Philharmonic. He has written many compositions on Jewish theme for orchestra.
http://lajs.home.att.net/bios/LucasRichman.htm
Robert and Molly Freedman Archive of the University of Pennsylvania
An "archive or over 3,000 Yiddish folk and art songs, theater music, comedy and klezmer music in songbooks, reference works and sound recordings." There is a searchable database in Yiddish and English with more than 25,000 entries.
http://www.library.upenn.edu/friends/freed/
Ron Shulamit Conservatory of Jerusalem
The Ron Shulamit Music Conservatory is located in Jerusalem, Israel. Since 1910 the school has been providing students with quality music and dance education, while bringing the arts to communities across Jerusalem and Israel as a whole, through performances by ballet troupes, chamber orchestras, ensembles, and youth choirs. The school has made 3 CD's, including one by the accordian orchestra, one of the recorder trio and one by the chamber orchestra. Chassidic niggunim, songs based on psalms, traditional shabbat holiday melodies, as well as contemporary arrangements of Jewish classics (including several by Israel Edelson) are all contained on the CD's.
The recordings can be purchase by sending an email: ronshulamit@yahoo.com
To learn more, read this (pdf) description .
Margie Rosenthal, See: Sheera Recordings
Robert Stern
Robert Stern, Professor of Theory and Composition, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has written several Jewish thematic compositions. Faculty biography at University website.
http://www.umass.edu/music-dance/faclist2.html#rstern
Rubinchik's Orkestyr
Newly formed Jewish band in Austin, Texas. Currently 7 members with a CD Flipnotics Freilachs.
http://www.nonpareil.net/rubinchik/
Rubin, Joel Rubin Jewish Music Ensemble
A 6-member klezmer group organized in 1994 and performing widely throughout Europe.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/simontov/
Ruth Rubin--
Yiddish folklorist, ethnomusicologist and song collector. Ruth Rubin collected and notated over 2000 Yiddish songs. Ms. Rubin sang the Yiddish folksongs, often unaccompanied. She made documentary recordings such as "The Old Country" on Folkways Records, with other folksingers such as Pete Seeger included in the project. In a documentary about her life and work, "A Life of Song: A Portrait of Ruth Rubin" by Cindy Marshall, Ruth Rubin states that her parents moved to Montreal in 1904 and she was born there in 1906. She was born on Sept. 1, 1906. (Mark Slobin, in his new introduction to "Voices of a People" lists her as being born in Khotin, Romania.) At age 5, her father died. She attended The Aberdeen School, a Montreal Protestant school, and in the afternoons, a Jewish secular "shule", the Peretz Shule,-- getting an immersion in Jewish Yiddish culture. At age seven she appeared on stage for the first time at the Monument National Theatre in Montreal as part of her school's annual concert. At 18, she moved to New York City. Inspired since meeting Shalom Aleichem in 1915, Ruth produced a book of "modern" Yiddish poetry called "Lider" in 1927 under her maiden name "Rifka Royzenblatt". She married Sam Rubin in 1932 and had one son, Michael. She credits her mother, whose her vast knowledge of Yiddish song was extensively tapped, as one of her early informants of Yiddish song. Around 1935, encouraged by Chaim Zhitlowsky and Max Weinreich, Ruth Rubin began to seriously collect folksongs using a modified ethnographic method. By 1950 she produced her first popular anthology, "A Treasury of Yiddish Folksong." Her book "Voices of a People: The Story of Yiddish FolkSong" appeared originally in 1963, and was recently republished in 2000 in a new edition by University of Illinois Press. Ruth Rubin lectured widely at college campuses, Jewish centers and Yiddish folksong groups, and inspired a newer generation of ethnomusicologists such as Mark Slobin and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. She continued gathering music from informants until very late in life. She died at 93 in year 2000. An obituary appeared in The Canadian Jewish Press and New York Times.
Canadian Jewish Press Obit
Ruth Rudinow nee Leviash
The following article was supplied by her daughter, Naomi Rudinow Cohen.
Ruth Leviash was born in Odessa, Russia, July 24, 1890. She studied at the Imperial Conservatory in Odessa, graduating in 1917. She married Moshe
Rudinow, (who also graduated in the same class,) on February 28, 1917. In 1919, they left Russia and toured though Europe, reaching Palestine in
1920, where they joined the First Palestine Opera Company. Moshe and Ruth sang in operas and concerts throughout Palestine until 1927, when she and her
husband sailed to the United States. Their son, Jacob was born in Odessa in August 1919, and their daughter, Naomi was born in Tel Aviv in July 1925.
Both reside in California. Ruth lived with Moshe, (Cantor of Temple Emmanuel,) in New York until
1948, when he retired and they moved to Oakland, California to be closer to the children. She continued to sing in concerts until Moshe's last illness and death in 1953. Ruth moved back to New York in 1955 and pursued her interests in music,
arts and crafts and her circle of friends and relatives. In 1985, after some
health problems, she moved again to California and lived until age 99 ½. She died April 10, 1990
Recordings of her vocal renditions (solo and in duet with Moshe,) are available on audiocassette, and soon on CD.