Words and Music

Here's a peek -- shot during a very casual rehearsal -- at what'll be on tap when Malcolm Kogut and I bring our cabaret show to Stea...

From the Food Vault Dept.: It’s nice to report that Maggie’s Café and Sports Grill is still going strong. It’s not a place I’d visit regul...

From the Vault Dept .: This year, the Albany Berkshire Ballet gave its 43rd annual tour of “The Nutcracker,” which played at The Egg in Alba...

ARTURO TOSCANINI WAS BORN IN 1867, and this sesquicentennial year has been marked by events that include a significant new biography by Har...

From the Recent Past Dept. : Here’s a recent look at the current occupant of a key Lark Street space that helps give Albany what little repu...

Where Was I Again? Dept .: Not far from this piece in my files was another holiday event I took in three decades ago. And how much less mis...

IT’S BRUTALLY COLD TODAY, with a wind that crisps the edges of the cold air and chases it up your trousers. I’m in a coffeeshop – a food co-...

Where Was I? Dept .: Looking back thirty years, I was reviewing my butt off. Here’s one example, one of the many productions of this piece I...

IT WAS A BIRTHDAY GREETING for my wife, many years ago. A gift, lavishly wrapped (for me, the introduction of scotch tape into the wrapping ...

From the Food Vault Dept .: Thirty years ago I decided to pack it in as a restaurant reviewer. I’d done it for two years and the grind had w...

WHAT’S MOST ENDEARING about the story that gives us “She Loves Me” is its improbability. We need to see two lonely people despise one anothe...

THANKSGIVING SEEMS MORE AND MORE subsumed into the Christmas frenzy, if the displays of lights in my neighborhood are any sign. Not all wait...

SOMETHING (FOR US) COMPLETELY DIFFERENT was the watch cry as this year's Thanksgiving planning commenced, and somebody (my daughter, I...

From the Theatrical Vault Dept .: Some of us simply worship Florence Foster Jenkins, and have done so since long before the movie came along...

From the Tech Vault Dept. : Strictly for those who enjoy the intersection of technology and nostalgia, here’s my comprehensive look at the t...

From the Food Vault Dept .: The life expectancy of most restaurants is brutally brief. Sakura, a hibachi steakhouse that I reviewed a decade...

From the Vault Dept .: For no studied reason, except that this piece of mine appeared in Metroland almost exactly 21 years ago, here’s a loo...

AS THE KING’S SINGERS eased into the end of Billy Joel’s “Lullabye,” the sonority of the shifting chords produced one of those silent audien...

IN ORDER TO COMMISSION THE DISCOVERY of P.D.Q. Bach’s “Concerto for Simply Grand Piano and Orchestra,” pianist Jeffrey Biegel enlisted sixte...

From the Food Vault Dept .: In the twelve months since the piece below ran, Sunhee’s in Troy has continued to gain an enthusiastic following...