Words and Music

Happy Labor Day Weekend!

Soft Stillness and the Night Dept .: After repeatedly running into David Janower at P.D.Q. Bach concerts in Manhattan, it only seemed right ...

Keeping It Platonic Dept. : Welcome back to class. As you know, the two volumes of Alcibiades ascribed to Plato are assumed to be spurious, ...

Guest Blogger Dept .: Another bit of doggerel by the indefatigable P. G. Wodehouse, which carries the note: “It is suggested that children s...

History Lesson Dept .: Here’s a decade-old piece of mine that still is marginally pertinent, and at the very least gives an idea of how much...

Personal Narrative Dept .: One of the perks, if you can call it that, of taking Speech Class in high school was being tapped to make the mor...

IF YOU CAN DEVOTE but one day to a Bard Summerscape composer series, you should go whole hog. A Saturday, for example, starts with a 10 AM t...

Cabaret Team Casual | Mohonk Mountain House Photo by Lily Whiteman | 19 August 2013

Family Values Dept. : I suppose if family members actually got along with one another, there would be no theater. This production certainly ...

Credit Where Due Dept .: Nothing sparks awareness of my superannuated sensibility more than songs – and songwriting. As a teen, I schooled m...

Leon Fleisher Dept. : For several days I’ve been itching to listen to Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1, my favorite recording of which features...

20 August 2013 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

With Malcolm Kogut and Amy Prothro Mohonk Festival of the Arts | 18 August 2013

Mohonk Dept .: I’m heading again to perform at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, NY, one of the last of the old-fashioned, all-inclusive,...

On the job today . . .

How to Conduct Yourself Dept .: Erich Leinsdorf was an assistant to Toscanini in Salzburg, music director of the Boston Symphony, author of ...

Way Back When Dept .: A new orchestra sprang up in the Albany area couple of decades ago to satisfy the needs of choral groups that needed s...

Guest Blogger Dept .: Speaking of theater, let’s enjoy Alexander Woollcott's screed on censorship. He gives us the perspective of 1922. ...

THANKS TO ITS OPENING MOMENT, “Heroes” assures us from the start that it won’t turn into too-talky BBC-type fare. That opening moment is sil...

Stubborn Stains Dept. : On April 30, 2003, I was excused from a rehearsal of “The Wizard of Oz” with the NY State Theatre Institute in Troy,...