Words and Music

From the Tech Vault Dept. : There can’t possibly be a more technologically dated piece in my files than this one. Here I am, in 1995, tellin...

Photo by B. A. Nilsson  

I’VE NEVER LIKED having my picture taken. Of course, it’s required when pursuing and promoting entertainment gigs, but I’ve learned to endur...

It’s the Taxman Dept. : As you struggle to meet the IRS deadline today (actually, the deadline is next Monday, but today’s date has a mystic...

From the Classical Vault Dept. : Thirty-five years later, Harlow Robinson’s Prokofiev biography is still the best of an ever-increasing shel...

From the Food Vault Dept .: I haven’t been back to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center for several years, not since a Philadelphia Orchestra...

From the Vault Dept .: From 1871 to 2017, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus toured the world, an ever-changing spectacle tha...

DUDLEY MOORE devised this piece for “Beyond the Fringe,” the 1960 revue that changed the face of comedy. As he tells it, he came up with it ...

From the Tech Vault Dept. : Here’s another dinosaur of a piece that I found on an ancient hard drive, but can find no tearsheets in my files...

From the Food Vault Dept. : I’m not sure where the reference to 1939 you’ll see below came from; according to fairly reliable sources, the s...

From the CD Vault Dept.: Back in what we didn’t realize were the waning days of compact discs, the major labels actually did us some favors...

Guest Blogger Dept. : I mean, how much of this stuff of mine can you take? Hence this relief, thanks to a return appearance by George Ade. B...

IF I DIDN’T KNOW BETTER, I’d think that José Andrés is obsessed with vegetables. But I do know better: He’s obsessed with everything to do w...

From the Jazz Vault Dept .: I offered a piece here a few days ago about Nick Brignola , which reminded me that the Albany area has a still-e...

From the Opera Vault Dept. : As we anticipate another summer of musical delights at the Glimmerglass Festival, we look back to productions w...

From the Food Vault Dept .: The saga of the restaurant reviewed below is a doughty one. A 19th-century farmhouse was turned into a convent i...

From the Jazz Vault Dept .: How nice to note that 35 years ago, almost to the day, I was enjoying my first live-concert exposure to guitaris...

From the Classical Vault Dept. : First, let me note that Max Lifchitz remains, as I write this, a distinguished member of the faculty at SUN...

Guest Blogger Dept .: Robert Benchley points out that he hasn’t been featured on these e-pages since late last year. Fear not, my friend: th...

From the Classical Vault Dept .: Here are liner notes I wrote for a proposed CD release of Bohuslav Martinů’s Violin Sonatas, which would ha...