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Once in a while – much more frequently than I'd prefer – I'll hit a patch in which I find myself too busy to take even the five, ten or fifteen minutes required to post one of my New York Times reviews here for a day or three. Given that I usually review three performances…
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But we shall return, shortly. Stay tuned.
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Blair McMillen and Robert Mack, by Hiroyuki Ito/The New York Times Da Capo Chamber Players at Merkin Concert Hall, January 29, 2013The New York Times, Feb. 4, 2013 Do try to hear Wendell Logan's Runagate, Runagate some time. You'll be glad you did.
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Fall and all attendant memoriesCrowd the day with unrelated historiesEach year leaves its unresolving fantasiesTo hang around each cornerHang around each street. Thick with ghosts, the wind whips round in circuitriesCarrying words as strangers exchange pleasantriesDo they intrude upon your private reveriesAs they meet you on each cornerMeet you on each street. Watch for daily…
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Not that you were worried, but yes, Son of Night After Night, the Tumblr I launched during my most recent blogging hiatus, is still active, and I think I'm getting a sense of how I want to continue to use it. Over here, you'll see links to my work for The New York Times and…
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The consistently excellent mostly-cassettes label Hooker Vision has posted excerpts from its late August tape batch on Soundcloud. Grab yourself an earful.
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Those who've read this blog on a more than occasional basis since it started know that in the last six years I've written here far less than I used to, for fairly obvious reasons. The posting went down still more a few years later, also having to do with taking on more professional responsibilities. None…
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Rumble…crackle…snap…ping. Stay tuned.
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Welcome back, my friends, to the show that repeatedly ends. Late June and early July were a time of uncertainty, with several disparate, largely unrelated issues and agendas conspiring to take up my attention. During the last week, though, a few key distractions were resolved at last. One tangible result, though perhaps not one of…
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Thinking back on the Batman and Detective comics I collected back in the early to mid 1980s, I remember preferring the issues drawn by Don Newton and Tom Mandrake, with strong, clean lines and clear depictions of the various characters in Doug Moench's hyperbolic dramas. The issues drawn by Gene Colan I felt less strongly…
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I didn't mean to let the blog slip again, honest. But the daily workload I manage is onerous enough on its own terms; factor in an impending vacation, and it was clear that something had to give. But that vacation, around nine days in Costa Rica from April 30 to May 8, did what it…
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"Discipline is never an end in itself, only a means to an end." — Robert Fripp (To be continued.)
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"White Light: Is It Driven by the Soul or by Sales?"The New York Times, November 23, 2010 As I mentioned in the post-before-last, The New York Times asked its classical-music critics and reporter to discuss the pros and cons of the White Light Festival at Lincoln Center on the paper's Artsbeat blog about a week…
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Fall and all attendant memoriesCrowd the day with unrelated historiesEach year leaves its unresolving fantasiesTo hang around each cornerHang around each street. Thick with ghosts, the wind whips round in circuitriesCarrying words as strangers exchange pleasantriesDo they intrude upon your private reveriesAs they meet you on each cornerMeet you on each street. Watch for daily…
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Paul Motian has been playing at the Village Vanguard for half a century now, his earliest engagements of note in a legendary trio with pianist Bill Evans and bassist Scott LaFaro. Quietly revolutionary, that group broke with the age-old model of the piano trio as a vehicle for a leader with support, proposing instead a…
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Eric Whitacre's Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings at Carnegie HallThe New York Times, June 17, 2010 Back from a brilliant but brief trek into the Rocky Mountains, I'm confronted with a colossus (or, as a Times headline writer put it, a juggernaut) of another kind. I confess that I'm bracing myself for the displeasure of…
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The New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher HallThe New York Times, June 5, 2010
Night After Night 