Words and Music

George Ade Dept. : We invite the distinguished newspaperman and fables-writer to spin another yarn of How Things Were and How They Ought to ...

From the Theatrical Vault Dept. : A few years ago, I was hired to write promotional copy for Albany’s Capital Repertory Company (known now i...

From the Vault Dept .: During the course of my thirty-year Metroland career, I wrote a massively wide variety of reviews, advances, calenda...

From the Theater Vault Dept. : Here’s a charming little musical that had its world premiere in Cohoes, NY, in 1989; it had runs in Chicago a...

From the Vault Dept. : Thirty years ago, the Albany (NY) Symphony offered a splendid performance of Mahler’s Fourth, one of the more accessi...

AS A CHILD, Jinah Kim’s favorite dish was pan-fried yellow croaker. When her mother would prepare it for the family, it reaffirmed their Kor...

Guest Blogger Dept. : Do movies pander to the masses? Nearly a century ago, Robert Benchley argued the point in this 1920 Vanity Fair piece....

SOMETIMES YOU NEED NO WORDS to make a convincing argument. Listen to violinist Isabelle Faust dance through the difficult bariolage passages...

FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY, when the First of March also fell on a Friday, seven aides and advisors to Richard Nixon were indicted by Judge ...

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...