Words and Music

Overindulgence Dept .: It's Thanksgiving again, and, although I swore I wasn't going to spend several days in menu planning and meal...

From the Classical Vault Dept. : I’ve grown much more hopeful about the state of large orchestras in the 32 years since I wrote the piece be...

From the Pages of History Dept. : I blog-posted the piece below more than a decade ago, by which time they had become footnotes to an admira...

I’VE NEVER BEEN MUCH in thrall to the doomsayers. They used to be charmingly represented in single-panel cartoons as a bearded old man hefti...

JEROME KERN AND OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN insisted that they wrote “Old Man River” with Paul Robeson in mind, which is no surprise given the way the...

THERE WAS NO SENSE OF MELANCHOLY in Tom Paxton’s performance on Oct. 19 as he entertained a gathering of the faithful at the Eighth Step in ...

From the Theater Vault Dept.: During the late 1980s, an experiment in theatrical presentation settled into a small Schenectady theater for ...