Words and Music

From the Tech Vault Dept .: Once again from way back when, here’s my 17-year-old attempt to explain the Usenet phenomenon for readers of the...

From the Concert Vault Dept .: The Albany Symphony Orchestra’s 2013 American Music Festival takes place this weekend, and its centerpiece is...

From the Vault Dept .: Yesterday’s post told a story that took place during a trip to Lake Placid to write about the Mirror Lake Inn. It re...

MY DAUGHTER HAS an introspective streak that leads her to unexpected bouts of philosophizing. “Why,” she asked recently, “am I here? I mean,...

From the Vault Dept .: A springtime concert report from 23 years ago, when Antonin Kubálek gave a solo recital in Troy. He made several reco...

Guest Blogger Dept .: Before he wrote “The Front Page,” before he began a distinguished career as a Hollywood scriptwriter, Ben Hecht was a ...

Watercolor by Gerian Williams, 1990

From the Tech Vault Dept .: Following my years writing for a number of big-circulation computer magazines, I offered tech columns to Metrola...

From the Kitchen Dept .: This week’s Metroland features my review of an Albany diner that transcends the genre. It got me thinking about di...

From the Classical Vault Dept. : Here’s a piece I wrote for the Schenectady Gazette , one of a series I came up with to prove my worthiness ...

INTENSIFY THE SCRUTINY of the sexual undertones that inform Ibsen’s “The Master Builder” and you further complicate an already complicated s...

From the Vault Dept .: This piece goes back 17 years but, like so much well-considered wisdom, really hasn’t dated. It’s from Metroland . ...

BY THE TIME JIMMY RAY BENNETT breaks into a tapdance to a tune reminiscent of “Anything Goes,” it makes magnificent sense and gently tops ev...

17 May 2013 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Finishing the Hat Dept .: Here’s a longer version of the piece running in this week’s Metroland , along with the photo I took of the event. ...

From the Grill Dept .: Ten years ago I offered some outdoor cooking advice. Except for the effloresence of smokers in my backyard, not much ...

Centennial Awareness Dept .: Composer Jerome Moross was born in 1913. As his daughter, Susanna, writes, he “is probably best known for the f...

Travel and Leisure Dept .: Early in 1990 I made plans to spend a week in Minneapolis to perform in a show that got canceled right before my ...

Guest Blogger Dept.: An early poem by P.G. Wodehouse . Here’s P.G.W.’s introduction to the piece: A sensation has been caused in Portland, O...

Stage to Screen Dept .: Ten years ago, two notable filmed-play projects made their DVD debuts. Both remain in print as of today, with what o...