Words and Music

From the Fairly Recent Past Dept .: This interview with Glimmerglass Festival Artistic Director Francesa Zambello was written before the sta...

Guest Blogger Dept .: Joey Nash was a singer with Richard Himber’s Ritz-Carlton Orchestra during the mid 1930s, but he also was a skilled an...

The simple act of bending isn’t simple any more. When something falls, I leave it on my very cluttered floor. My eyes refuse to focus and my...

A delightful ditty from 1937, dedicated to all political candidates, office-holders, Super-PAC donors, and anyone portrayed in "The Big...

THE MUSIC OF PDQ BACH RETURNED, with orchestra, to a New York concert hall just after Christmas for two performances; I attended the first o...

CLASSICAL MUSIC, OR WHAT’S LEFT OF IT, retrenches and redefines itself with impressive alacrity, trying again to do what it did before it wa...

From the Digipages of Metroland Dept .: A bunch of us put the paper to rest with an online-only final edition, to which I contributed this w...

THE GUT-WRENCHING CRY of “Respondemos” – melismatic, nasal, featuring more flatted tones than any five Billie Holiday records – set a stark ...

CRUSHING YOUR CONCOCTION into pillows of pasta is the fun part, the payoff for the work you’ve been through to get there. For the many years...

MARTHA ARGERICH IS A PIANIST for whom no music seems too technically challenging, but one with strong repertory preferences. Like Horowitz, ...

From the Metroland Vault Dept .: We used to offer an end-of-year roundup of classical-music concerts, hoping that would seem important, and ...

Metroland in Memoriam Dept.: I’m raiding the more obscure corners of my contributions to the now-stilled Metroland Magazine, but it looks p...

Metroland Retrospective Dept .: Where did I dine two decades ago? At Sam Zoleo’s newest restaurant. He ran Sam’s Place in Saratoga before op...

Our twenty-fifth Thanksgiving dinner at Jollity Farm. While we can't help but salute the melting pot that is the greater culinary world ...

A preview of my Jan. 24 show at Saratoga's Caffe Lena. Somehow it ties in with Thanksgiving.

MASTERY OF PROKOFIEV’S PIANO MUSIC requires complete mastery of the piano: the composer wrote for (and possessed) a blistering, ambitious te...

From the Metroland Vault Dept .: Meeting larger-than-life actor George DiCenzo in 1987 meant dining with him as well, and we ended up sharin...

From the Metroland Vault Dept. : Saluting my too-many years as Metroland ’s restaurant reviewer, here’s another from the early days. In fact...

Remembering Metroland Dept .: While I don’t think the body has stopped breathing, while Metroland remains in its coda, I’m exhuming some of...

From the Vault Dept. : Pianist Yuja Wang has out a new album sporting Ravel’s two concertos and the Ballade by Fauré, and its cover photo in...