Some excellent big band recordings have come out recently, proving this storied and lively jazz subgenre continues to sizzle all these decades after the heydays of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Glenn Miller.
Read More »Jon Sobel
Music Review: Vadym Kholodenko – ‘Scriabin: Preludes, Études and Sonatas’
The pianist's new album is a superb survey of some of the most distinctive music by a composer who is today well remembered and valued by musicians and composers, but heard by audiences too seldom.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): ‘Anxiety Stew,’ New Musical About Food Anxieties by David Kelly
Solid performances don't rescue this sequence of disconnected musical numbers sung by characters suffering from fanciful ailments.
Read More »Book Review: ‘Checkpoint’ by David Albarari
The noted Serbian author muscles this Kafkaesque short novel into the war-is-absurd literary tradition in one tremendous 183-page paragraph.
Read More »Book Review: ‘A Million Drops’ by Víctor del Árbol
In this novel the prizewinning Spanish author skillfully weaves minutely imagined personal stories into the wide sweep of history. One gets the sense Árbol has gazed long and deeply into the human soul, found little redeeming there, and nonetheless felt compelled to lay it all out for us in glorious, gritty, and sometimes gory detail.
Read More »Book Review: ‘Ramayana: An Illustrated Retelling’ by Arshia Sattar, Illustrations by Sonali Zohra
Sattar captures the enormous foundational Indian epic in a package written for older children and young adult readers. But it's accessible for all ages, and many adults ignorant of Indian legends, like me, will find it of interest, as well as visually striking.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): ‘the hollower’ by Liza Birkenmeier
This New Light Theater Project premiere is perceptively imagined, lovingly staged, beautifully acted, and definitely different.
Read More »Concert Review: ‘Joachim Stutschewsky and the Music of His World’ with Julian Schwarz and Marika Bournaki (NYC, 22 May 2018)
We're fortunate these neglected composers of the New Jewish National School have found worthy champions.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC Off-Broadway): ‘Peace for Mary Frances’ by Lily Thorne, Starring Lois Smith
Thorne's story plunges into the troubled waters of modern hospice care, even as it swims with the prehistoric sharks of family squabbles and old wounds.
Read More »Concert Review: Four Nations Ensemble and Sherezade Panthaki – ‘Fête Galante’ (NYC, 17 May 2018)
The music of the Fête Galante-era composers like Jean-Marie Leclair counteracted the grand style of their predecessors, just as Watteau's paintings of regular people enjoying simple pleasures in the outdoors contrasted with the heavy subject matter of the art he'd grown up with.
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