Words and Music

Crystal Ball Dept. : O, those prognotications of the year ahead! They fade so easily that by the time summer arrives we’ve usually forgotten...

From the Theatrical Vault Dept. : I reproduced in these e-pages an opinion piece I wrote in 1984 after the premiere of a Raggedy-Ann musical...

From the Food Vault Dept .: We’re still in early March, so don’t be fooled by the melting snow. It’s only clearing a space for what’s bound ...

From the Concert Vault Dept. : My stint as a classical-music reviewer began after I submitted samples to all the area newspapers, correctly ...

From the Food Vault Dept. : What, I occasionally ask myself, did I have for dinner thirty years ago? In many cases, it’s on record, and in t...

From the Vault Dept. : I wrote a series of liner notes for the mch-lamented Dorian Recordings label back when they were headquartered in Tro...

From the Vault Dept. : Early in 1984, B. A. Nilsson vanished from the pages of Albany’s Metroland Magazine, and a similarly erudite scribbl...

From the Vault Dept. : I mentioned in last Friday’s post the situation that emerged as I took on the post of classical-music reviewer for Al...

From the Literary Vault Dept. : Did this piece actually run in Metroland ? I can’t remember, and I’m not curious enough to go digging throug...

From the Vault Dept .: Some thirty years ago, Proctors in Schenectady tried a noble experiment by inaugurating a small, separate theater ser...

From Somebody Else’s Vault Dept .: Here’s an unsigned piece from the Chatham (NY) Courier’s “Rough Notes” section. That it comes from nearly...

From the Food Vault Dept. : I ran into Joseph Soliman while food shopping today (I buy in large-enough quantities to justify going where the...

AS A TERM OF SOCIAL IMPORT, sustainable , like so many politically charged buzzwords, threatens to blur into non-specificity. “Sustainable,”...

From the Food Vault Dept .: It was a mob scene. The 2012 Bacon Fest in Hudson, NY, attracted so many attendees that almost no food remained ...

From the Vault Dept .: Lully’s “Armide” won that composer his greatest acclaim, and the 2005 production by Toronto’s Opera Atelier was succe...

Lost Masterpieces Dept. : I wrote a few chapters of a book to be titled The Fat Man’s Diet many years ago and could persuade no publisher o...

Guest Blogger Dept. : What better way to finish the year than with some holiday reflections by Robert Benchley? He describes the following p...

From the Food Vault Dept. : Last New Year’s Eve, I sought a restaurant to which to retreat after a performance I give in Albany. The place h...

From the Classical Vault Dept .: Pianist Alicia de Larrocha switched record labels in the late 1980s, and embarked on a project with her new...

Follow-Up Visit Dept.: As part of my research while writing a review of Gary Kleppel's book The Emergent Agriculture , I visited his far...