New York Musical theatre Festival

The New York Musical Theatre Festival, the original home of Altar Boyz, [title of show], The Great American Trailer Park Musical, Gutenberg! The Musical, the Big Voice and Nerds:// A Musical Software Satire, among many others, will be accepting submissions for their Next Link Project from JANUARY 1, 2007 through MARCH 1, 2007. The Next Link Project is the NYMTF central series of new musicals, accounting for 18 of the 30+ productions in each year's festival. NYMTF maintain an open submissions policy and a blind evaluation process to ensure that writers from every level of the theatre community, from working professionals to those whose work has not yet been produced, are given the opportunity to participate.
For complete information:
http://www.nymf.org/
For more information, and to begin the online submission process, see: http://www.nymf.org/Page-101.html

World of the Piyut in English

Top musicologists and other scholars from Snunit, Avi Chai Foundation, and Hebrew University, among others, have a new website with an English version up and running: An Invitation to Piyut. Accroding to the site: "There are two archives at the core of the website. The central archive is a collection of piyutim and melodies. Here you can find piyutim divided into various categories and run a general search on all of the piyutim. Each piyut has two central “pages.” The first offers an in-depth look at the piyut, presenting different perspectives of background, commentary, and explanation. The second is a list of melodies, including a range of melodies and performances of the piyut. The second archive contains texts and melodies not classically defined as piyutim – such as selections from Psalms or traditional Jewish prayers. This category of the archive is necessary because there is a close functional relationship between these types of texts and melodies and the world of piyut, both aesthetically and in terms of practical traditional uses."
You can explore, hear and read about this amazing collection of Jewish traditional music at:
http://www.piyut.org.il/english/

Budowitz New 2-CD album

Recorded in Zurich and Geneva, the Budowitz klezmer ensemble has a new 2-CD set of Jewish instrumental music available. A MUST! Check it out here: http://www.goldenhorn.com/display.php4?content=records&page=ghp029.html Budowitz:
Christian Dawid:C-Clarinet, Baraban
Tamás Gombai:Violin
Cookie Segelstein:Violin
Sándor D. Tóth:Three-string Bratsch (Viola), Baraban (Drum)
Zsolt Kürtösi:Three-string Bass, Three-string Cello
Joshua Horowitz: Tsimbl, 19th Century Button Accordion