Oreet Ashery: 'The fishy case of Whitstable’s cross-dressing false messiah'

Oreet Ashery’s performance art involves her playing a strictly Orthodox man and a fish-touting charlatan of yore.

For the past two weeks, Oreet Ashery has been living in a derelict fisherman’s hut without running water and electricity. Such is the price of success.The Jerusalem-born performance artist won the Whitstable Biennale 2008 open submission prize, giving her the chance to create a new work for this popular contemporary visual-arts festival in the old Kent harbour town. 

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Miri Ben-Ari: The hip hop violinist set to salute Israel

Miri Ben-Ari plays classical and contemporary, parties with Kanye West and supports Holocaust education. We talk to her ahead of her London gig

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Steve Toltz: A joker who bites back at hacks

We meet Steve Toltz, an Australian novelist set to make a huge impact

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Julian Velard: Sad, lonely… and loved by housewives

Julian Velard is the biggest news in music since Duffy. He is courted by top record labels and daytime TV hosts. So why does he look so miserable?

If you were impressed by the vocal gymnastics of Jamie Cullum and Michael Buble, but would rather they sang their own songs; if you enjoy Amy Winehouse’s music but are disturbed by how, well, disturbed she is; if you like Billy Joel or Elton John but wish they were not so uncool... try Julian Velard.

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Michael Sophocles: 'Of course I know kosher'

The failed Apprentice candidate, who embarrassed himself on national TV with his lack of kashrut knowledge, sees his next task as learning to become more Jewish

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Being uncle Topol

The iconic Israeli actor is to take on a caddish father-figure role in London. So what happens to that inner Fiddler that has defined his career?

Chaim Topol is singing. To make a point about a lyric, he wants to get to a particular line in a particular song which, when he sings it on stage this summer, will induce sighs of fond recognition in some, and stony disapproval in others. “Thank heaven for little girls…” He is singing sotto voce so as not to attract attention in the Maida Vale café, not far from his West London apartment.

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Erik Satie: Gonzales, the classical rap comic

He plays Erik Satie, hip-hop and does satire on stage between songs. No wonder he has identity issues

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You think I’m wild? You should see my mother

In the swinging ’60s, Marianne Faithfull lived a life of sex, drugs and rock and roll, and almost ended up paying the ultimate price. But, as she reveals, she wasn’t the first wild child in her extraordinary Jewish family

Marianne Faithfull was raised as a Catholic, but the husky-voiced singer says she has her Jewish roots to thank for her acclaimed renditions of the songs of Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill. People were astounded when they first heard her perform their work, she recalls — which started her wondering why she had such an innate flair for their music.

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A musician's deep notes

Dan Kaufman has an unlikely success mixing rock music and the Holocaust

Dan Kaufman’s new album, Force Of Light, issued by American avant-garde composer John Zorn’s Tzadik label, is a pensive yet powerful response to the work of post-war poet and Romanian-Jewish Holocaust survivor Paul Celan.

The leader of the leftfield rock group Barbez, Kaufman uses to mesmerising effect extracts of Celan’s poetry, read by Scottish poet Fiona Templeton, and a variety of musical styles from experimental jazz and post-rock to Eastern European folk and classical.

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Enjoy musicals? Watch this man

Alexander Bermange went abroad to get his break as a musical-theatre composer. But there are signs that he is going to be as big in the West End as he is in Frankfurt

The world of musicals — glamorous on the outside, competitive and demanding on the inside — is not always an easy place to be. To succeed there, you need passion, drive, luck and at least a modicum of talent. Alexander Bermange appears to have all these qualities. Born in 1976, he wrote his first musical, Nessie, in 1994, at the age of 17.

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