Words and Music

MARTHA ARGERICH’S LUGANO FESTIVAL ( Progretto Martha Argerich ) is in its 15th year, with a just-completed schedule of events that bodes to ...

From the Concert Vault Dept .: I’m listening to some recent releases by Jordi Savall and will write about them in this space in the coming d...

From the Seller’s Cellar Dept .: Pennsylvania approved the sale of wine in grocery stores two months ago, prompting some talk of New York lo...

From the Vault Dept. : Let’s go back thirty years to visit a piece I wrote about an issue that hasn’t changed much in the interim, except fo...

A DAY AT BARD COLLEGE’S SUMMERSCAPE FESTIVAL is a journey through a well-planned series of events. For example, the program on Sunday, Augus...

From the Restaurant Vault Dept. : Jim and Ute Mehalick opened the Hofbrauhaus in Lake George in 1980, and ran it there for a decade; they re...

“I AM PROUD OF THE FACT that my songs seem to cut across and find perhaps a unifying thing, basic humanity, and that is why I would love to ...

From the Vault Dept .: Summer is when the Capital Region grows opera-rich, but that’s comparatively speaking. Twenty-six years ago it was fa...

PERFORMING IN AN OPERA CAN’T BE EASY for any of the participants, but my vote for the hardest-working cast member in Rossini’s “Thieving Mag...

AS WITH ANY RACIALLY CHARGED SUBJECT, there are many contexts in which “The Merchant of Venice” can be viewed. Jews were still barred from S...

From the Food Vault Dept .: I’m pleased to see that Minissale’s Wine Cellar Café still is going strong at its perch on the edge of Troy’s 14...

PIANIST LINCOLN MAYORGA has been championing the music of George Gershwin with virtuoso accomplishment over the course of a long career, ess...

WHY WOULD AN OPERA AND THEATER DIRECTOR – a director with a long, long list of credits, thus implying a successful career – saddle a masterf...

COMPARING CONTEMPORARY NEW YORK CITY with Belle Époque Paris is convenient insofar as income disparity obtains, and living conditions for a...

The State of the Stage Dept. : A friend read my recently exhumed overview of the 1987 summer arts season, which skimmed over what would be ...

From the Vault Dept. : Here’s another in a lengthy series of workaday pieces I churned out over the years, a preview of such arts events as ...

From the Food Vault Dept .: In the restaurant business, Mother’s Day is the busiest while Father’s Day typically is a walk in the park. Rest...

THREE CHORDS UNDERLIE the Blues, the same three chords that inform much of the more popular examples of western music. In a Blues song they ...

IN 1959, THE DAY AFTER my third birthday, my father flew me from our home in Cincinnati to visit his parents in Astoria. We traveled on a D...

26 May 2016 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson