My brother and I carried our shared past in different directions
| 10:53 AM Jan 6, 2009
One of my mother’s most vivid early memories is of the Nazis trying to break down her door. She was five, and the door was the big, heavy front one on the house she was born in, a few yards from the Arno in Florence. It was 1944. As she tells it, the Nazis, who ...
When Italians fell for klexmer, Francesco Spagnolo tuned them in to the forgotten sounds of their own people
| 10:57 PM Dec 12, 2005
In the late 1980s, klezmer music was making a comeback in the United States, but also on the festival circuit in Europe. It even caught on in Italy, which struck Francesco Spagnolo as strange; klezmer had nothing to do with Italian Jewish culture, a venerable and singular blend of Ashkenazic and Sephardic influences.
Back in Italy, ...
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