Words and Music

NEW DEMANDS from a dynamic global economy, continued decline in the quality and availability of natural resources, and the unprecedented cha...

Guest Blogger Dept .: Robert Benchley returns with, well, thoughts on fuel saving, which are most appropriate as we enter autumn. Mr. Benchl...

From the Food Vault Dept .: I ran the review below on this blog a decade ago as the sidebar to another piece from the same Metroland issue. ...

From the Record Shelf Dept .: The reason for this reissue is explained in the text. I’m just not certain if it truly ran in Metroland , the ...

From the Classical Vault Dept.: I’ve been covering the Bard Summerscape series for enough years that some of the earlier programs I’ve atte...

From the Theater Vault Dept. : Thirty-five years after the piece below appeared, Bread and Puppet Theater is still active, still based in Gl...

With Labor Day upon us again, let's revisit a classic song performed by Mordecai Bauman and the Manhattan Chorus.

Guest Blogger Dept. : Mark Twain published surprisingly little about the abolitionist cause, which had been a heated subject in his childhoo...

From the Classical Vault Dept. : I remember this concert well. The aged audience at Memorial Chapel was usually given to odd coughs and eruc...

From the Theater Vault Dept .: Here’s a memory-lane piece that reminds me of folks in the area theater community who became friends, and one...

From the Food Vault Dept .: I’m delighted to see that the Rose and Kettle is still holding strong, having weathered the pandemic (so far) i...

 YOU CAN ARGUE that Stravinsky or Schoenberg was the most influential classical-music figure of the 20th century, but they vie for the limel...

From the Computer Vault Dept .: Not only was the piece below written 26 years ago, I also have practically no memory of writing it, so assem...

OFFENBACH’S “LA PÉRICHOLE” offers a terrific mezzo-soprano role, if you don’t mind appearing drunk and morally dubious, and Isabel Leonard s...

THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL continues its pandemic-wary season with another 90-minute version of a popular opera, in this case Verdi’s “Il Tro...

From the Classical Vault Dept. : There’s been a struggle for recognition that women in the arts have been waging for far longer than current...

From the Food Vault Dept : Here’s one of my earliest restaurant reviews, from the days when Metroland had no budget for meals, so we asked f...

From the Classical Vault Dept. : These hot, moist summer days put me in mind of just a such a day thirty-five years ago, when my wife and I ...

From the Vault Dept .: Here’s a piece I stumbled across while seeking something else on the internet, reminding me that somem of the goodies...

WHAT DO WE KNOW about H. W. Hanemann? That he lived from August 8, 1895, to September 2, 1968. That he wrote the screenplay for “Flying down...