Michael Jackson was one of the most-widely known singers in the world. He began in a singing group as a child with his brothers, The Jackson 5. As he reach adulthood he launched a solo career that exploded into a global phenomenon. His dancing, including his famous “Moonwalk,” was groundbreaking and electrifying. Though he was… Read more »
Category: Music Festival
West Bank Story
In 2005 a short film debuted taking one of the hottest conflicts in the world and bringing a message of peace and hope through a musical comedy. The plan for West Bank Story as a take-off of the classic musical “West Side Story” sounds like a recipe for disaster. Two competing falafel stands, Kosher King… Read more »
Rafael Schäcter and the “Defiant Requiem”
During World War II the Jewish inmates of the Terezin Concentration Camp (sometimes known as Theresienstadt) under the Nazis found a nonviolent way to resist, to claim their own identity and find a place of freedom amid the horrors of the Holocaust. The key was music. The initiator was Rafael Schäcter, a Czech Jewish composer… Read more »
Edwin Starr (1942-2003)
Edwin Starr was one of the singers to come out of Detroit’s Motown Records. Born in Tennessee and raised in Ohio, he moved to Detroit to become part of the dynamic music scene. He had many Soul and R&B hits, but his big #1 hit was “War.” Those powerful lines immediately jump to mind and… Read more »
Stan Rogers
Stan Rogers was known as the folk singer who captured the lives of Canadian people from the Maritime Provinces to the Great Lakes and Plains. He certainly wasn’t a pacifist as one of his songs (“Harris and the Mare”) sadly celebrates a conscientious objector who reaches his breaking point when a drunk assaulted the “conchie’s”… Read more »