Words and Music

From the Vault Dept .: Here’s a cookbook roundup I wrote for Albany’s Metroland Magazine seven years ago. I’m still consulting some of these...

Guest Blogger Dept. : We welcome the debut on this blog of O. Henry, pen name of the dipsomaniacal jailbird William Sydney Porter, whose sto...

A CHEF WHO WAS TEACHING ME to make bread regarded my kneading practice with dismay. I was using the opportunity to inflict imaginary violent...

FRENCH COMPOSERS HAVE CELEBRATED the flute more vividly than any others. Berlioz was a flutist himself, and never spared the instrument in h...

From the Computer Vault Dept. : I just found another piece I wrote for the magazine Yahoo! Internet Life (they lurk in old hard drives), pr...

MY TWO MOST MEMORABLE concert-going experiences both were recitals by guitarist/lutenist Julian Bream. It’s difficult to describe what made ...

From the Musical Vault Dept .: One of the most engaging artists to have emerged from the long-running Martha Argerich-hosted summer fesitval...

From the Vault Dept .: Advances aren’t nearly as interesting as reviews, but this piece looks at a theater piece with dance that presented a...

From the Food Vault Dept .: The Olde Bryan Inn in Saratoga Springs has a venerable history, which includes two review visits that I paid du...

From the Musical Vault Dept. : Monday’s post recalled a warm Saturday night when I enjoyed a program at Robert Conant’s Greenfield Center (N...

From the Music Vault Dept.: It was good and hot at the end of July 1986, and the temperature in a small studio out in the woods on a hot day...

Guest Blogger Dept. : One of the best-selling novels a century was Booth Tarkington’s Penrod , a collection of stories in the popular genre ...

THERE’S A SCHUBERT SONG known as Ständchen (D. 957 No. 4) that Liszt transcribed for solo piano; a simpler transcription became a very popul...

RON CHERNOW'S MIGHTY BIOGRAPHY of Alexander Hamilton stares at me, unread, from a nearby bookshelf. I’m also unfamiliar with the massive...

MY HOUSE, which was roomy as can be back in February, has dwindled to something the size of a city apartment. It’s an old farmhouse with fou...

THE HEART AND SOUL of David Bromberg’s latest recorded offering, “Big Road,” is an eleven-minute version of “Diamond Lil.” The song, a Bromb...

“I ACTUALLY READ WOODY ALLEN’S MEMOIR” is the headline for Caitlin Flanagan’s review of Woody Allen’s new memoir in “The Atlantic.” She brav...

Guest Blogger Dept .: And who better than Robert Benchley to help us through this traumatic summer? Drawings by Gluyas Williams.            ...

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...