Category
Like the weather, the gloomy words of literature threaten to upend. I’ve been reading Christopher Isherwood’s A Meeting by the River; last night I got to the part where one of the characters commits a heinous act. I was so mad at him I almost threw the book across the room. I tossed…
Continue readingPublished Attitude: The Dancer’s Magazine Winter 2010 It’s rare that one art form forces you to take the measure of another, but such was the case during the February engagement of the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company at the Joyce Theater. It was a question of jazz: Lubovitch presented an evening of pieces set to works…
Continue reading
Most know him as Mr. Cleo Laine, but if anything John Dankworth was probably more accomplished as a jazz musician, and certainly better known on the UK side of the Atlantic. If you think you’ve never heard his work before, just think back to the British series The Avengers–that stunning musical opening, a vibraphone…
Continue reading
Along with her sister Anna, Kate McGarrigle’swas a wry voice dipped in sweet nostalgia. A friend gave me an album of theirs (Love Over and Over) when I arrived in NYC and I was immediately entranced. What was it about those seductive harmonies, often accompanied by an accordian peal? I suspect it tempered the big bad city’s influence–theirs was the sound of innocence melding into…
Continue reading
Sometimes the only way to mourn is to listen, especially when the object of loss is a musician whose work dredges up a lifetime of memories. By the time I’d heard Pyramid, The Alan Parsons Project had already recorded 2 albums; I’d come late to what the hetero boys in my burb called, derisively, art rock,…
Continue reading
It’s good to live it again: the openings, the excitement, the sheer volume of folks taking their talents out for a walk. New York’s art part is in full swing, from its galleries to its opera houses, dance spaces and theaters crammed to bursting with the kind of startling, involving work that makes me happy…
Continue reading
The face may not be familiar but if you grew up watching television in the 60s you’ll never forget the snarky music that accompanied these words: “They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky, they’re altogether ooky, the Addams Family.” Even in my predominately black midwestern neighborhood Mizzy’s compositions for The Addams Family, Green…
Continue reading
When the dust settles from the week that was—the news tributes, the restoration of EBay and Amazon catalogs, the pending autopsy—one question might surface: where were you when you heard the news? I’d just walked into Casanis, a Lower East Side bistro, for dinner with J; after I placed my wine order he told me…
Continue reading
