Words and Music

From the Theatrical Vault Dept. : Thanks to a recently acquired scanner that whisks piles of papers into PDFs – and its accompanying OCR pro...

IT'S THE THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY of the lavish Thanksgiving dinners we've served here at Jollity Farm, so we weren't about to let ...

Guest Blogger Dept .: This Thanksgiving slice-o-life comes from O. Henry, who spent the dawn of thge 20th century relentlessly chronicling t...

From the Classical Vault Dept. : Here’s another look back at where I was planting my critical butt thirty-five years ago. Performances by Ca...

From the Vault Dept .: Twenty years ago, I had the pleasant job of writing liner notes for Dorian Recordings, a small company producing fant...

From the Classical Vault Dept. : Who celebrates a nineteenth anniversary? That’s a date calling for a gift of bronze, which hardly applies t...

THERE COMES A MOMENT in each person’s life when dance-band recordings from the 1920s are discovered. It’s hard to be unmoved by them, and, w...

From the Food Vault Dept. : Early in my restaurant-reviewing years I spent an afternoon at the Schenectady Museum’s Festival of Nations, a f...

From the Computer Vault Dept. : I heard you clamoring for another one of my vintage computer-magazine pieces describing an era the technolog...

From the Vault Dept .: This was one of the most compelling talks I’ve ever attended, and I’m grateful to have my review of it linger as a so...

From the Theater Vault Dept .: I would have loved to have seen the revue “Cole” in its original Mermaid Theatre run; I saw “Cowardy Custard”...

Guest Blogger Dept .: We welcome back the late H. Allen Smith, whose wonderful books, beginning with the best-selling Low Man on a Totem Pol...

From the Food Vault Dept .: I started reviewing restaurants early in 1986, successfully pitching to Metroland Magazine the notion that we co...

From the Computer Vault Dept. : We’re clearing boxes of books and magazines from a room being renovated and I discovered a bunch of old comp...

THE CURRENT PANDEMIC has kept us away from restaurants but it hasn’t slaked our taste for food. It may not seem appropriate to ascribe any a...

From the Vault Dept. : The late conductor Kurt Masur was an unashamed champion of the music of his native Germany, and chose to finish his c...

From the Opera Vault Dept. : One of the most powerful American opera’s is Carlisle Floyd’s “Susannah,” which resonates all the more deeply i...

Guest Blogger Dept. : We welcome back George Ade, who has been busy grinding out more of his insanely popular “Fables in Slang.” Here’s his ...

AS YOU MAKE YOUR WAY through this well-reasoned, well-researched, densely written book, you may hear the sound of a scream, a crescendo of p...

From the Classical Vault Dept .: When I visited Newell Jenkins at his Columbia County home in 1985 to learn about his upcoming concert serie...