Words and Music

Striking Your Fancy Dept .: The Fancy Food Show is back in Manhattan, its first revisit since 2010. I’m about to step into the giddy morass ...

Culinary students, CIA, Hyde Park, NY 21 June 2013 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Tars in Bars Dept .: The world woke up to the phenomenon of Leonard Bernstein in 1943, when he made his conducting debut with the NY Philhar...

Heigh-Ho, Opera! Dept .: Although current Glimmerglass Opera artistic director Francesa Zambello has a reputation for high-concept stagings...

Say It with Music Dept .: We can’t have too many musicals, and with Albany’s Capital Repertory Theatre set to premiere The Sparkley Clean Fu...

Guest Blogger Dept .: This is the first longer-than-a-quatrain poem I memorized, probably around the age of twelve. I was fascinated by the ...

Sadly Prescient Dept .: We roll back to 1984, near the start of my reviewing career. It took me but a few forays into the world of classical...

Counting on Calories Dept .: “For it’s Sunday morning breakfast time, / A time all men adore. / Why don’t the poets go into rhyme / And rave...

Late June 1985 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Gazette’s Loss Dept. : In 1990 the idea was floated around the Schenectady Gazette that I might merit a column. I wrote a few samples for th...

From the Bookshelf Dept .: Bill Bryson has a new book coming out in October. One Summer: America 1927 looks at that particular point in tim...

Guest Blogger Dept. : Once again, Booth Tarkington takes the blogger seat, with an excerpt from one of his most famous novels, Penrod . You...

Liner Notes Dept .: Another in the series of program notes I wrote for Dorian Recordings, this one for a CD by the sixteen-piece Boulder Bra...

Summer on the Boards Dept. : Once upon a time, summer was the season of an incredible array of plays presented in repertory at venues seemin...

Cool & Strange Dept. : I had the pleasure of contributing to Dana Countryman’s Cool & Strange Music! Magazine during its brief, glo...

Singing at Proctors Theatre on Cole Porter's birthday. Photo by Patrick Dodson/Schenectady Gazette.

Poetry Slam Dept .: Not that I haven't enjoyed my time on the alienist's couch, but it does seem as if we're lately unable to fu...

Once and Future Jazz Dept. : Dan Levinson is as protean a talent as they come in the jazz reeds department. He plays regular gigs in the NYC...

From the Spice Rack Dept .: My kitchen is a wonderland of herbs and spices, from the commonplace to the exotic, expanding each time I experi...

Guest Blogger Dept .: Here’s a curio by Noël Coward , the first chapter of Terribly Intimate Portraits , published in the U.S. in 1922, rewo...