Words and Music

REVERSALS AND REVELATIONS are the exciting stuff of drama, with playwrights struggling to outdo themselves and one another with the surprise...

From the Computer Vault Dept. : With so much information exploding across the internet, how about an irregularly published magazine with a t...

From the Chamber Dept .: This afternoon the Emerson Quartet will make its final Schenectady appearance with David Finckel in the cello chai...

20 April 2013 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

From the Vault Dept .: Leo Kottke performs tonight at a theater at Albany’s Empire State Plaza – better known as The Egg – so to whet your ...

Evanescent Art Dept .: To celebrate the work of Mark Rothko – especially (but, I’m afraid, coincidentally) in light of the just-opened produ...

Out of the Hat Dept .: Harry Blackstone Jr. carried his father’s famous name into the second half of the 20th century, but without using the...

From the Vault Dept. : Away back in the 1980s, before the boom times hit and we all grew wealthy, there was a phenomenon called “debt” that ...

Breaking Eggs Dept .: When the curtain fell on Patricia Snyder’s tenure as director of the NY State Theatre Institute in 2010, it was a sad ...

c. 1986 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

From the Vault Dept .: With the days lengthening and the weather warming and everything in nature that grows growing, I think about escaping...

From the Celluloid Shelf Dept .: With Robert Redford’s movie The Company You Keep exploring the topic, I thought it was time to revisit a d...

Guest Blogger: H. L. Mencken (1880-1956). A tireless critic who larded his essays with impressive wit, Mencken wrote intelligently on a br...

AS A SIX-YEAR-OLD FAN of the Hardy Boys books, I was becoming trained to spot the evidence of malfeasance all around me. Frank and Joe had ...

From the Vault Dept .: Sad to say, I missed Tom Paxton’s performance in Schenectady last Saturday. I chose instead to attend the monthly get...

In Memoriam : Richard McKee stopped by my house in Schenectady one wintry day in 1985 so that I could interview him for the piece below. We ...

4 April 2013 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Guest Blogger: S. J. Perelman . He became best known for the New Yorker pieces that persisted well into his and the century’s 70s, but virt...

From the Vault Dept .: From the series of program booklets I wrote for the sadly defunct Dorian Recordings label, here’s the St. Petersburg ...

Glad you asked . . .