The 16th century Jewish composer Salamone de Rossi is one of the more elusive figures in the world of Jewish liturgical music. All we know about him is the music which he left to us. In this first Podcast in what I hope will be series on the Jewish composers, Stephen Newman tries to find out a little more about Salamone de Rossi the man, how his mu…

There are more ways than one to record a choir! Danny Harouche is a DJ and KJ (Karaoke Jockey). He runs karaoke sessions for private parties, clubs and pubs. He also, like me, runs his own mobile recording studio. His background in first DJing then KJing has led him to approach his recordings in a very different way to the way I approach mine. I we…

In this first podcast, we look at one of the building blocks you will use when arranging your song: Chords, what they are and why they are so important. We look at how you can use chords to influence emotion in your audience and how you can use them to define harmony. We then get down into the guts of musical theory and take look at a really useful…

Yigal Grayeff, an old mate of mine from my university days, called me one day to announce that he had resigned from his nice secure financial journalist’s job and bought a Music School. Unsure whether he had simply gone mad or just made the most amazing career move of his life, I just had to go and find out what on earth he had got himself into. I …

Once I knew what Jewish music was. I knew how it sounded, where it came from and what made it stand out from any other type of music. Then my Dad went on a quest to try and define it. That’s when the trouble began. Everything I thought I knew about it went out the window. So what is it that makes music Jewish?…