NOW PLAYING: The greats of Jewish music, in their own words
December 15, 2021
One of the founding goals of the Milken Archive was to document and preserve the music of the American Jewish Experience. As part of that, over 800 hours of oral history video interviews were recorded with some of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
Now, in partnership with the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience, we are excited to unveil a new level of access to those artists. Our new Oral History section will allow fans, scholars and musicians to get to know these artists with full-length, never-before-seen video interviews and searchable transcripts.
The first 12 videos, now available on our website, feature just a few of the great artists whose works are part of the Milken Archive collection and whose music has shaped the American Jewish experience in so many ways:
David Amram, Robert Beaser, Herman Berlinski, Dave and Iola Brubeck, David Diamond, Shulamit Ran, Esta Salzman, Ben Zion Shenker, Raymond Smolover, Robert Starer, Hugo Weisgall and Yehudi Wyner
Interested in a particular artist? Watch their interview. Curious about a particular subject? Search for it in the transcripts (and click on the names or time codes to jump to that part of the video). Wonder how deep the connection between Dave Brubeck and Darius Milhaud was? A quick search will highlight the 20 times that Milhaud is mentioned in the Brubecks' nearly 2-hour interview.
Discover the stories behind the music like never before…
