Words and Music

THE IDEA OF A JUKEBOX OPERA using Rossini’s music is a terrific one – so good, in fact, that the world-premiere production of Tenor Overboar...

Guest Blogger Dept. : Stephen Leacock insists that he’s been overlooked. No longer shall I allow this indignity to continue, so here’s one o...

From the Food Vault: It’s outdoor dining weather, and Metroland magazine used to devote an annual issue to the topic, wheedling ad dollars ...

From the Very Soil Dept.: This is a companion piece to my review of What Your Food Ate , the incredibly compelling new book by David Montgo...

From the Food Vault Dept. : Things have been getting a little too healthy around here, so here’s a review I wrote in 2013 about a barbecue j...

WHAT YOUR FOOD ATE is the startlingly portentous title of a new study by the married team of David Montgomery and Anne Biklé, a book that ta...

WILLIAM BOLCOM’S INTEREST IN RAGTIME began in 1967, when he learned of a vanished ragtime opera by Scott Joplin – a name he’d never heard – ...

RUSS WALTER’S BUSINESS MODEL probably would send an economics consultant screaming out of the room. Walter has been writing and selling The ...

 Guest Blogger Dept. : It’s George Ade again, a regular visitor to these e-pages, with another fable in slang. It describes details of the v...

From the End of Humanity As We Know It Vault : Bill McKibben is best known for his prophetic and tireless fight to promote climate awareness...

STUNG WITH AN ATTACK of middle-class guilt, Stephen Henderson sought to expiate by helping to cook meals at a variety of soup kitchens aroun...

From the Theater Vault Dept. : After seeing an incredible performance by Michael Fischetti in “Glengarry Glen Ross” at Capital Rep the seaso...

From the Food Vault Dept. : It’s difficult to tell what’s going on at Schenectady’s Van Dyck Restaurant these days. It turned into the Mad J...

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...