Words and Music

Sweet Snake-Oil Dept .: I found this pamphlet in my attic while re-wiring and insulating. It's undated, but there's a companion pie...

Provincetown, Mass. | Aug. 17, 2007 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

From the Coop Dept. : Against all odds, we still have two of the Rhode Island Reds we acquired eight years ago. Otherwise, the brood is a m...

I WRITE LIGHT VERSE. I also write song lyrics. I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that such efforts best succeed when they’re rhymed corre...

Vintage Stuff Dept .: In late 1985, I was settling in as one of the Albany-area arts-writing hacks. I made my debut in the Schenectady Gaze...

As a restaurant reviewer, I’ve seen places I praised suddenly close and places I hate soldier on, but I never had the experience that befell...

ONE OF MY FIRST photos. Note the cunning composition of power line and (just-built) fence, and the casualness of the subjects. Man, I was go...

APRIL 23 IS THE birthdate of several artists whose work I admire: William Shakespeare, Sergei Prokofiev, J. P. Donleavy, and Vladimir Naboko...

Vintage Stuffe Dept., Shakespeare Division: Long before I had any professional association with the NYS Theatre Institute, back in the days...

DICK CAVETT HAS A piece in today’s New York Times reflecting on the 1972 Carnegie Hall performance by Groucho Marx. Cavett, who was host...

When it comes to kitchen knives, I've been a die-hard carbon steel partisan for decades. But I was hearing so many good reports about ne...

My restaurant review in today's Metroland extols Tara Kitchen in Schenectady, where excellent Moroccan cuisine is offered. Back in No...

Felicia Boswell and Bryan Fenkart THE BROADWAY MUSICAL “Memphis” opened on tour last night in Schenectady. Immediately thereafter, Dick ...

Guest Blogger Dept.: Today's author is Sergei Prokofiev, who offers a diary entry from June 16, 1913.                                ...

Yes, I got cranky in a recent review of a splendid performance by The Knights at the Troy Music Hall. And that's an edited version! (A...

April 14, 2012  |  Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Back in the old days, when we all were exciteable pups, significant classical music events got a newspaper preview and then a review right ...

Yesterday I posted one of my rewrites of the Major General's song from "The Pirates of Penzance." It wasn't the only t...

From the Technology Vault Dept .: This time I saw it coming: a hard-drive failure. I backed up everything just in time, and, fortunately...

TRUE TO ITS commedia dell’arte roots, Richard Bean’s “One Man, Two Guv’nors” plays fast and loose with the theater’s fourth wall. That w...