Words and Music

From the Back Pages Dept. : Novelist William Kennedy’s work also has been seen on stage and screen, one of the more recent such an adaptatio...

WE HEAR THE PEDAL C from the organ, a note echoed by contrabass and contrabassoon, and then the trumpets ascend with the I-V-I of the triad,...

From the Vault’s Vault Dept .: He was a cranky fellow, so it’s no surprise this collection had to be issued posthumously. But the beginnings...

Encore from the Vault Dept.: In celebration of the coming meteorological armageddon, here's an encore posting of a piece I ran on this ...

    Happy birthday, Lily! Here's what started it all.

(Date and Photographer Unknown)

From the Slush Pile Dept .: Here’s a book review I wrote for Metroland , but it seems never to have run. So here’s its debut. The book was t...

Guest Blogger Dept .: Kentucky-born Helen Bullitt Lowry was a member of the D.A.R., a contributor to such magazines as Harper’s Bazaar , and...

From the Vault Dept .: Let’s go back a few years to when a significant string ensemble came to town to give us a mix of classics and new wor...

Staying Loose Dept .: Yesterday’s post reminded me of a piece I wrote three and a half years ago, profiling Linda Smith and her company Div...

Comforting Cozy Dept .: This week’s Metroland is the annual Mind, Body, and Health issue. I wrote about my cure-all: tea.                 ...

The Phoenicians, Albany NY 9 March 2009 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

From the Vault Dept.: Writing about music for so many years put me in contact with some of my heroes, but it took a while for any interview...

Guest Blogger Dept.: The original edition of this book came out in 1896 and was popular enough to be revised and reissued at least until 19...

3 January 2015 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

The Real You Dept. : My ongoing file cabinet cleaning yielded another surprise today: the results of a handwriting analysis my wife ordered ...

From the Back of the File Cabinet Dept. : This popped out at me yesterday, stuck in a folder that otherwise had things like newsletters from...

AS THE RONDO of Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 2 percolated along, delivering one surprise after another, it seemed as if David Finckel, the c...

Guest Blogger Dept .: Another selection from Chicago reporter-turned-playwright (and “Gone with the Wind” screenwriter, among many others) B...