Words and Music

From the Vault Dept .: The Philadelphia Orchestra returns to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center tomorrow evening for three weeks of familia...

Across the U.S.A. Dept .: Much of the appeal of writing, for me, is surprising myself with felicitous turns of phrase. Sometimes I borrow fr...

I enjoy sharing time with kids in a casual setting, but I have little patience with the parents who schlep their tykes to public events whe...

July 22, 2012 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Cellphone photo by B. A. Nilsson SPOTTED THIS CRITTER at an outdoor garden center in Guilderland, NY, yesterday, and marvelled at its hu...

. . . FREE! AS THE PARENT of a youngster, I welcomed those words. I believed that I had an inalienable right not to need to pay for the tot’...

From the Kitchen Drawer Dept .: I recycled a piece about knives in an April post; this one looks at other cooking tools.                ...

RESEARCHING THE MUSICAL “The Music Man” the other day unearthed this Playbill cover from Dick Van Dyke’s 1980 Broadway revival of the show. ...

From the Vault Dept. : How tools have changed in a mere seven years! When I wrote this piece, I had yet to acquire a smartphone, with its a...

Across the U.S.A. Dept. : In Sept. 1989, my wife and I drove a VW camper from New York to California and back. Along the way I wrote a coupl...

. . . have warned me that cat photos are required. July 27, 2011 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

ONE OF HOLLYWOOD's most reliable and unique character actors was Mischa Auer, whom I wrote about here . You’ll note the kicker at the cl...

“Put on something I haven’t heard before,” my daughter often says when we’re considering music to listen to at home. I picked out a Bear Fa...

I WAS SIX FEET tall by the time I turned 13, so I didn’t experience much bullying once I was in junior high school. And the only significant...

Blue Man Group originally appeared at Proctors in its infancy in 1990 as part of the Proctors Too series of experimental shows. Since then,...

L to R: Byron Nilsson (seated), Mark Mercurio, Ric Ebeling, Denis McKeon, Blake Milne. BY 1972, I’D APPEARED in a few high-school produc...

From the Vault Dept. : I began reviewing restaurants in early 1986 for Albany’s Metroland Magazine. The story of my first review – and the...

Pontassieve, Italy | Oct. 4, 2005 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Guest Blogger: Guy Wetmore Carryl . Time for a light-hearted trip back to a time when Mother Goose held some moral authority, and tales like...

In yesterday’s post , I mentioned Frederic Rzewski, a brilliant composer and burn-ass pianist born in Westfield, Mass., and for many years l...