Words and Music

HIS LITERARY CAREER began with a parody and soon reinvented the genre he’d mocked. But Eric Ambler first wanted to be a playwright, and had ...

From the Classical Vault : It turns out that the my review below celebrated the first American visit from the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra wi...

From the Stage Vault Dept .: How best to put an epic like The Iliad on the stage? Why, with a solo actor and the assistance of a cellist, as...

From the Musical Vault: The Albany Symphony has a new recording out of music by Michael Daugherty, with whom the ensemble has long been ass...

From the Food Vault: Ten years ago, I wrote about this strip-mall restaurant, which endured for several years before giving way to the Mexi...

OUR EARS HAVE GROWN ACCUSTOMED TO a range of rhythm and harmony that probably would baffle or even antagonize someone living a couple of cen...

DESPITE THE BEST EFFORTS of my elementary-school science teachers, the world of biology only really opened up for me as I thrilled to the ex...

Guest Blogger Dept .: Mark Twain’s diaries finally have been published in their entirety, and they’re a joy. (At least until you get halfway...

WELCOME TO INTERNET ACCESS SECURITY CLEARANCE (IASC). In accordance with the Federal Anti-Terrorism Online Resources and Protection Act of 2...

From the Food Vault Dept .: A piece I wrote just last summer, celebrating a trendy place in trendy Troy, NY, yet it’s a place with none of t...

I WON’T BE WATCHING THE OSCARS, but I usually don’t. A long-ago trauma put me off the show, which is really a case of blaming a blameless en...

From the Food Vault Dept.: There’s a small eatery on Schenectady’s Erie Boulevard that for many years – at least through much of the 1980s ...

From the Vault Dept.: Here’s one of the most unusual (for me) pieces I’ve cranked out over the years. Many years ago, a friend had taken a ...

From the Food Vault Dept .: I lunched at the Redwood Diner not long ago and am happy to report that it just as accommodating as it was when ...

WENDELL BERRY HAS BEEN THE CONSCIENCE of rural America for several decades, presenting a cohesive, considered response to the over-industria...

From the CD Shelf Dept .: The admirable show- and movie-centric label DRG reissued a pair of Noël Coward albums back in 2003 – albums origi...

This blog would like to take a moment to salute the 117th or 118th (there is a small, flickering dispute out there) birthday of Jascha Heife...

From the Smut Vault Dept. : Back in the glory days of the internet’s infancy, I wrote a computer-information column for a magazine called D-...

From the Back of the Fridge Dept .: Back when I was reviewing restaurants for Albany’s Metroland magazine, we enacted a policy whereby we di...

From the Vault Dept .: I treasured the six-record set of Lionel Hampton’s small-group recordings that was issued in the waning days of the L...