The award-winning Milken Archive of Jewish Music reveals the universality of the Jewish experience to people of all faiths and backgrounds. The Milken Archive’s “virtual museum” is an interactive guide to music, videos, oral histories, photos and essays chronicling over 350 years of Jewish music and culture in the land of freedom.
Since its founding by Lowell Milken in 1990, the Milken Archive has become the largest collection of American Jewish music ever assembled—roughly 600 recorded works, more than 500 of them world premieres.
Additionally, the Milken Archive’s collection contains over 800 hours of oral histories; nearly 50,000 photographs and historical documents; thousands of hours of video footage from recording sessions, interviews, and live performances; and an extensive set of program notes and essays that illuminate the music's historical and cultural context. The Archive's repertoire was determined by an editorial board comprised of notable composers, cantors, performers, and scholars.
A groundbreaking academic center
In December 2020, the Lowell Milken Family Foundation and UCLA announced the opening of the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience (LMC-MAJE), North America's first permanent home for the academic study of American Jewish music. Housed in the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, LMC-MAJE will foster artistic creativity, scholarship, performance and other cultural expression.
LMC-MAJE also builds on the Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music at UCLA. That fund's establishment, in 2017, enabled the school of music to begin its collaboration with the Milken Archive and build a track record that opened the door to the more expansive center. The fund has produced a diverse calendar of concerts, lectures and projects, ranging from klezmer workshops to large choral and orchestral performances to artist residencies and commissions of new music.
“Immigrant Songs”: A Landmark Documentary on Yiddish Theater
The Milken Archive of Jewish Music continues its mission to illuminate the breadth and depth of the American Jewish experience with Immigrant Songs: Yiddish Theater and the American Jewish Experience, a new documentary that recovers a formative chapter in cultural history. Drawing on rare archival materials, original music, and the perspectives of leading scholars and performers, the film traces the rise of Yiddish theater from its Eastern European origins to its vibrant flourishing on New York’s Second Avenue, and its lasting influence on American culture.
Immigrant Songs reflects the Archive’s ongoing commitment to preserving and sharing the music and stories that have shaped Jewish life in America. Both educational and deeply resonant, the film invites audiences to rediscover a dynamic artistic tradition that bridged continents and generations—demonstrating how music and theater not only expressed immigrant identity, but helped define the cultural fabric of a nation. Learn more about the documentary here.