Words and Music

Guest Blogger Dept. : Les Hendrix wrote for Schenectady’s Daily Gazette for 22 years, retiring in 1997 – not long after filing the doozy of ...

From the Music Vault Dept .: By the time I saw “Sweeney Todd” in its original Broadway run, Cris Groenendaal had taken over the part of Anth...

From the Theatrical Vault Dept. : Unless a play establishes a rollicking Broadway success, even the finest scripts are inclined to slip from...

From the Vault Dept. : I wish I’d bothered to note just who it was I shared a table with at Caffe Lena seven years ago, on the night when I ...

From the Culinary Vault Dept .: Cookbooks are their own kind of ephemera, easing in and out of print as culinary fads come and go. Here’s a ...

From the Theatrical Vault Dept .: O, witless youth! Here’s the young (or at least substantially younger) me carping about populist entertain...

Guest Blogger Dept. : Robert Benchley weighs in with sound advice for the temporary summer bachelor. The Detroit Athletic Club, founded in 1...

From the Vault Dept. : T.E. Breitenbach’s painting “Proverbidioms” took on a life of its own as it was discovered and studied by countless c...

Celebrating Labor Day as it was meant to be celebrated. The Manhattan Chorus sings Maurice Sugar's "Sit Down." Recor...

From the Vault Dept. : Speaking of comedy , and going back a mere decade this time, we find Louis C.K. peaking in his ascent to the top tier...

From the Vault Dept. : New York’s Capital Region endured a comedy threat 33 years ago – at least, that’s when I wrote this piece about it. O...

From the Vault Dept. : It was a delight to review all manner of entertainment event, and the opportunity to see Margaret MacLeod was not to ...

From the Music Vault Dept. : The Schenectady-based Empire State Youth Orchestra is an incubator of amazing talent, and has seen some amazing...

DURING THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY, Viennese operetta was always an escape. Spending a recent day with some of its highlights proved to be even m...

LISTENING TO ERNIE KOVACS is a reminder that he was a storyteller above all, more grounded, perhaps, than Brother Theodore, but with a more ...

From the Vault Dept .: Sometimes a book showed up on an editor’s desk that was unusual enough (the book, that is, not the desk) to merit out...

From the Food Vault Dept. : Here’s a piece from 1989 that ran in the short-lived Capital Region magazine, a glossy book that died, as did s...

AFTER THE DELUGE, IT WAS THE RESTAURANT. When the Mohawk Valley village of Fort Plain was hit by flooding in the summer of 2013 – four years...

From the Vault Dept.: I wrote this review little over a year ago, and I don't remember why. It wasn't published (until now), but it...

THE GHOSTS OF VERSAILLES are there to greet you as you settle into your theater seat. They’re garbed in white; they languish in the gloom be...