Words and Music

THE MOZART RECORDINGS grabbed my ear with their delicacy of touch and overall ethereal sound. This was late-night radio listening for me, a ...

From the Unihanded Reading Dept .: My debut as a writer of smut occurred in D-CUP, a magazine devoted to – but need I explain? This takes us...

 From the Culture Vault Dept.: Forty years ago, our already loose delineation of the Capital Region (often erroneously monikered as the Capi...

From the Food Vault Dept .: Recently, I was reminiscing about the variety of restaurants I found in Philadelphia in 2008, and the crazy trip...

Guest Blogger Dept. : It’s refreshing to learn that, along with all of his other passions, Robert Benchley nurtured an environmental awarene...

From the Vault of the Distant Muses Dept. : Alongside the restaurant review I posted last week was a handful of other pieces of mine that a...

From the Food Vault Dept. : Below is a review I wrote in early 1987, when I was about six years old. At least, that’s how it looks to me as ...

From the Classical Vault Dept. : Fifteen years ago, violinist Ray Chen performed in Schenectay, yet another example of a rising star being s...

From the Comedy Vault Dept .: Back in my reviewing heyday, I presented myself as someone able to write knowledgably about many different dis...

From the Concert Vault Dept. : Baritone Sanford Sylvan displayed such virtuosity as he moved through his 30s that his resume included appear...

FOR A FEW DECADES during the last century, when classical music was a familiar part of the musical landscape, many jazz bands borrowed tunes...

Critical Drubbing Dept. : A few weeks ago (in this piece ), I recounted my journey from a snotty, full-of-himself critic to a somewhat less-...

THE FIRST BATCH OF V-DISCS shipped to military fighters overseas on Oct. 1, 1943. Less than two years later, we won the war. Many other elem...

From the Classical Vault Dept .: Again (as with last week), going back twenty years, I wrote about two back-to-back concerts that included a...

From the Culinary Vault Dept. : Twenty years ago, I reviewed a restaurant in Saratoga Springs that seemed destined for a long run, but didn’...

 I‘ve Got a Secret RED NORVO STARTED HIS JAZZ CAREER playing xylophone, which isn’t a very shouty instrument, but he was forward-thinking an...

Mark Twain Dept .: It was the fashion, over a century ago, to entertain the public with dialect stories, which could range from the affectio...

TWO WEEKS AGO I posted a review of a biography of American abstract expressionist Barnett Newman that included a review of his work by NY T...

From the CD Vault Dept .: Back when Dorian Recordings was a thriving label based in Troy, NY, the aim was to produce the best-sounding CDs p...

NO PROMINENT ARTIST – at least none who ever talked about it – merged his personal identity so thoroughly with his work as American painter ...