Words and Music

21 July 2017 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

From the Vault Dept .: Dipping back into the Metroland archives, I found another of the utility pieces I cranked out so steadily. This is fr...

From the Computer Vault Dept .: I learned music engraving in the pre-computer days when you needed compass and ruler and an excellent letter...

From the Pantry Dept .: Enjoy this recent piece about Carmen’s Café in Troy, NY – but, even better, enjoy a meal there soon. As an update to...

WHEN MUSIC DIRECTOR John DeMain conducted “Porgy and Bess” for Houston Grand Opera in 1976, he presented it in a form as close to its operat...

Guest Blogger Dept .: We welcome back Guy Wetmore Carryl, light versifier extraordinaire, with a selection from Mother Goose for Grown-Ups. ...

What a Carve-Up! Dept .: Here’s another restaurant review from my brief stint covering such places for The Alt .                           ...

KINGSLEY AMIS’S 1976 NOVEL The Alteration imagined a world in which the Reformation never occurred, setting the stage for a boy’s struggle ...

Woody’n You Dept .: Here’s a review of a recent performance by members of the Albany Symphony, performing a very welcome piece by their frie...

“WHY DON’T YOU WRITE a piece about all kinds of prostitution – the press, the church, the courts, the arts, the whole system?” This was Bert...

11 October 2005 | Photo by B. A. Nilsson

From the Vault Dept .: Speaking of music and movies (as was the case yesterday ), here’s a trip down the memory aisle, to one of my earliest...

From the CD Vault Dept .: Here’s my review of a pleasant recording by Gidon Kremer that, as far as I can recall, never ran. So here’s some l...

Guest Blogger Dept .: We welcome back Robert Benchley, whose work as a drama critic in the early decades of the last century attuned his gen...

From the Vault Dept .: In 1987, a chunk of NYS Thruway dropped into the Schoharie Creek. In order to re-route traffic, the state seized land...

IT’S A SCENE FROM THE TUSCAN COUNTRYSIDE. Dancing Ewe farm sprawls across a Washington County hillside, dotting it with sheep. The Somers fa...

RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN’S “OKLAHOMA!” typically is lauded as the first Broadway musical to integrate book and lyrics, its songs flowing seam...

Following upon yesterday's review of When the World Stopped to Listen , Stuart Isacoff's study of Van Cliburn's triumph at the ...

VAN CLIBURN ROCKETED TO FAME on the back of Sputnik, metaphorically, when he won the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Mo...

Here, for your Independence Day delectation, is a stirring anthem by Charles Ives, a setting of a poem by Vachel Lindsay.