Words and Music

From the film "The Proud Valley."

From the Garden Dept .: We have grown a crop of garlic every year since the trip described below, in the fall of 2008. We now take for grant...

SOME AUTOBIOGRAPHIES are delightful and brief. Some whiskeys are appealingly strong. Both are a product of distillation, and David Black’s a...

Guest Blogger Dept. : Another visit from Ben Hecht, before Hollywood beckoned, joining with the voices of several distinguished colleagues i...

IN MY OFFICE AT HOME, the windows leak and the furnace has to heat the entire house in order to get my legs warm. I shut myself into the roo...

From the Vault Dept .: I’ve had occasion to drive down Madison Avenue in Albany a few times recently, passing the corner where the venerable...

21 February 2015 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

Guest Bloggers Dept .: Even as we grappled with multi-tonality of Schnittke’s music last Sunday and the less-challenging but still-challeng...

BACH WROTE SIX PIECES for unaccompanied violin, three of which he labeled “sonata” and cast in four movements: a stately opening, a fugue, a...

From the Concert Vault Dept .: Tomorrow we’ll have a violinist under discussion, so here’s a cellist to warm you up. It’s my review of a pe...

Necrology Dept .: At some point in your life as a public figure, you’ll have a good idea of what’s going to lead your obituary. Louis Jourda...

From the Vault Dept .: An unpublished review, probably intended for Metroland, that betrays my love for old-time radio. Copies of this set a...

Truro, MA | Photo by Joseph Schuyler

From the Vault Dept. : Where was I dining a decade ago? I began February 2005 with a visit to what was then the long-lived Holmes and Watson...

From the Smut Vault Dept. : One of my worst-kept secrets is the time I spent as computer correspondent Dr. Barry Tetons, advising the reader...

Guest Blogger Dept. : Where do you look for a guide to life? Unfortunately, the tender advice columns of yore have vanished. Where once the ...

From the Vault Dept .: Yesterday’s post about the Beefsteak extravagance I recently enjoyed put me in mind of another promisingly meat-rich...

What’s for Dinner? Dept. : Last weekend, the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, NY, held its second annual Beefsteak, and, keeping my repertor...

From the Vault Dept. : Twenty-seven years ago I reviewed a touring production of Roger Miller’s musicalization of Huckleberry Finn , a sweet...