Words and Music

From the Music Vault Dept .: I noted last week that I seize upon anniversaries as excuses for these postings, and today is no exception. Twe...

I’M SHOCKED TO REALIZE that I’ve been maintaining this blog for fifteen years (not to the day, but close). Its original purpose was to help ...

George Ade Dept. : I’ve heard no reports of an uptick in sales of George Ade’s Fables in Slang despite my promotion of those wonderful work...

From the Food Vault Dept .: This review, which I'd wanted to share much earlier, turned out to be hiding in a computer directory where i...

From the Theater Vault Dept .: Despite my lifelong Lloyd Webber antipathy, I felt inclined to like this show just on the basis of its unusua...

From the Library Dept .: Here’s a ten-year-old book review of mine that I never thought then to post on this blog – so here it is, still, I ...

  From the Recordings Vault Dept. : Every so often, while browsing through my files, I find a piece that I wrote on spec, or possible, as I ...

From the Food Vault Dept. : Here’s a review I wrote 29 years ago about a Jamiacan restaurant in downtown Albany, NY. At the time, it was fai...

A BIG CLUE TO UNDERSTANDING THIS BAND lies in the fact that Bob Crosby isn’t on the box set’s cover. It’s the first artist-centered Mosaic s...

As my ability to walk and even stand continues to deteriorate, I dreaded the process of putting together this year's Thanksgiving meal. ...

From the Musical Vault Dept .: The Cascade Soloists, as a group, is no more, but clarinetist David Shifrin continues a distinguished career ...

From the Vault Dept .: Tahuantinsuyo, a trio or quartet of musicians specializing in indigenous music of South America, was founded in the 1...

YOU’RE PROBABLY NOT GOING TO like this set. But I don’t want to underestimate you. To make the critical balancing act worse, I don’t want to...

Guest Blogger Dept. : Robert Benchley takes a gamble here to write about luck, our conceptions of which we can safely characterize as supers...

From the Tech Vault Dept .: Another of those mystery pieces that leap into my lap from time to time, in this case as I searched for somethin...

YOU WILL COME AWAY from this book with no doubt about Alex M. Stein’s love for his favored music. In fact, no matter how fervent a music-lov...

AS A LIFELONG CAT PERSON, I am most comfortable when my beast of the moment is snoozing on the nearby chair or prowling the house and yard f...

From the Food Vault Dept .: It’s the 25th anniversary of the review posted below, a review of a restaurant in Amsterdam, NY, that had been i...

EUGENE YSAŸE was one of last of the virtuoso violinist-composers who dominated the late 19th century, but unlike Wieniawski and Vieuxtemps, ...

Art Isn’t Easy Dept. : Just when you thought that the late John Updike had once and for all dropped his pen, along comes yet another weighty...