Words and Music

ONE OF THE MOST SURPRISING DISCOVERIES lurking in a trip through the complete works of Hector Berlioz is the sense of intimacy that peeks th...

SPEAKING OF BING (a new biography of whom I reviewed a few days ago), here's an example of his work in the 1950s. He'd just finishe...

SIX YEARS AFTER HIS FATHER’S DEATH, Gary Crosby put out a book that luridly described incidents of disciplinary abuse, catapulting the unsuc...

From the Vault Dept .: Australia’s tercentenary was celebrated thirty years ago with a worldwide variety of antipodean-related events. In Al...

LEGENDARY MEZZO-SOPRANO CATHY BERBERIAN developed a program in the early 1970s that presented a song recital as it might have been performed...

From the Food Vault Dept .: I’ve been researching Russian cuisine for an upcoming dinner, which reminded me of a review visit I made in 1996...

AS THE YOUNG WOMAN OBSERVES, it was Cousin Need, who “read all that Truman Capote all the time,” who told her about Clotho, Lachesis, and At...

FIRST, A CONFESSION: I have only ordered burgers at this place. Yes, I need to try different things, and I've tasted some of the alterna...

Mark Twain Dept .: Sam Clemens gave a talk in Fort Plain, NY, on December 19, 1868, part of what he termed his “American Vandals” tour, cons...

From the Vault Dept. : It now seems remarkable that we had John Cage hanging out in the area for a while, but it shouldn’t be a surprise. Ne...

From the Vault Dept .: I discovered Rosemary Clooney during her 1977 tour with Bing Crosby, when they performed at what was then the Uris Th...

YOU’D THINK THAT the sweeping orchestral complexity of Berlioz’s music would resist reduction, but his buddy Liszt turned the Symphonie Fant...

From the Bookshelf Dept. : Thomas Berger’s penultimate novel, Best Friends , again visited the realm of domestic treachery previously limned...

From the Food Vault Dept. : The Lake Placid Lodge I visited in 1996 is not the place you’ll visit now. The property has continued to develop...

From the Vault Dept .: How loyal are you to your country? That was the nasty little question essentially asked of balladeer Richard Dyer-Ben...

From the Food Vault Dept. : It’s the time of year to celebrate the tubers and such, so I dug up this piece I wrote nearly fifteen years ago ...

Guest Blogger Dept. : I was delighted to spend time recently with Nat Benchley, grandson of the humorist whose work I revere, and to discove...

From the Classical Vault Dept .: Eleven years ago, soprano Kiri Te Kanawa bid farewell to the performing stage with a tour that stopped in S...

An appropriate-for-the-day song I co-wrote with Tom Savoy for our musical adaptation of Booth Tarkington's "Beasley's Christmas...

CHEF ANA SORTUN graduated from La Varenne in Paris, but her interest in Middle Eastern food has taken her beyond that classical French foun...