Words and Music

WHEN DAVE BRUBECK disbanded his very successful quartet in 1967, saxophone star Paul Desmond had spent sixteen years with the ensemble, achi...

From the Musical Vault Dept .: During the peak of my concert-review years, I enjoyed many visits to the various spaces in habited by L’Ensem...

I CAME LATE to the Berlioz controversy by coming early to his music. Specifically, to his “ Symphonie fantastique ,” introduced in a high-sc...

From the Food Vault Dept .: When I moved to Schenectady in 1980, a restaurant near Mohawk Mall (now Mohawk Commons) was the only Indian eate...

YOUR VIEW OF THE EARTH may be immediately subverted by this book: most of it takes place in Australia, where the seasons are inverted and th...

From the Musical Vault Dept. : While combing the files for Monday’s post, I came across this review, written a couple of weeks later. I have...

From the Musical Vault Dept .: Can it really be that the most compelling view of musical performances now is in the rear-view mirror? I’m fe...

From the Theater Vault Dept. : We’re going back 35 years here, re-visiting my piece about the Sondheim Melody Dilemma. With no Sondheim show...

“FOR US IT'S BEEN about asking ourselves, how can we still show hospitality at such a weird time and place in our industry, when our tra...

VIOLINIST LARA ST. JOHN’S RECORDINGS include works by John Corigliano and Matthew Hindson, a collection of folk tunes and improvisations fro...

From the Computer Vault Dept.: Back in the heady days of late-’90s tech growth, I wrote for a number of computer magazines, among them the n...

From the Theatrical Vault Dept., or, Look Who We Had in Town! Sometimes there are legitimately surprising surprises to be found in my dusty...

I rise at nine, or maybe ten – There’s nothing really pressing; I spend an hour deciding when It’s worth the trouble dressing. I set the c...

From the Dance Vault Dept .: It’s easy to see what I was doing one weekend in April 1986: attending dance concerts. I reviewed two of them i...

From the Food Vault Dept. : Harkening back to the days of luxury travel . . . well, this isn’t quite it. It’s what passed for dining on Amtr...

I JUST WATCHED the most forbidden movie in America. Or so it seems. Dropped by Amazon Studios and picked up by no other U.S.-serving distrib...

Guest Blogger Dept. : We welcome the return of virtuoso versifier Guy Wetmore Carryl, and another of his lively creations from Mother Goose ...

From the Vault Dept .: O, how I took for granted the tours that came through the nearby towns! Even before the performing arts ground to a h...

Remember Live Music? Dept.: I’ve long been in love with Pamela Frank, both as a violinist (she, not I) and on a fundamentally carnal level....

Remember Live Performance? Dept. : One of the most compelling shows presented at Albany’s Capital Rep nearly a decade ago was Leslie Uggams’...