Review

Jazz CD Review: Vanessa Rubin Sings Tadd Dameron — Paying Expert Homage

February 20, 2019
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Smartly, Vanessa Ruben has gathered a strong group of collaborators, a number of whom knew Tadd Dameron personally and all of whom knew his music well.

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WATCH CLOSELY: “True Detective” — Mysteries of Mind and Soul

February 19, 2019
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This season of True Detective explores the figure of the cop as a permanently haunted man.

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Classical CD Reviews: Paul Lewis Plays Weber and Schubert, Steven Isserlis and Olli Mustonen Serve Shostakovich

February 19, 2019
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Two highly recommended recordings by well-known artists performing some rather off-the-beaten-path repertoire.

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Classical Concert Review: The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra Plays Beethoven

February 19, 2019
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Bread-and-butter of the orchestral repertoire though this music may be, there was no complacency to be heard in the orchestra’s playing of it.

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Book Review: “Gatsby’s Child” — America’s Old Money, In Decay

February 18, 2019
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Everything about Schumacher’s story indicates that clichés about the ’50s are so powerful because things really were that way: repressive, poisonous, full of unspoken secrets and blustering ignorance.

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Jazz CD Review: Wadada Leo Smith’s “Rosa Parks: Pure Love” — Making History Present

February 18, 2019
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Rosa Parks: Pure Love is a serious, substantial, and long work, alternately harsh and calming, one that I am sure should be seen as well as heard.

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Film Review: 1932’s “Million Dollar Legs” — Iconoclastic Euphoria

February 17, 2019
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Does the movie have anything to say about our zeitgeist? Well, the very entertaining cabinet-meeting sequence shows that chamber to be a place of male posturing, humiliation, sado-masochism, duplicity, and, finally, abject sycophancy.

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Opera Review: Beyond the “Barber of Seville” — New Recordings of Two First-Rate Forgotten Operas by Rossini

February 17, 2019
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Beethoven reportedly told Rossini to stick to writing comic operas. But new recordings of two of Rossini’s major serious operas bring great pleasure to the listener—and let us hear some splendid young singers.

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Jazz Concert Review: Mnozil Brass — Music-as-Vaudeville

February 16, 2019
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The seven-man musical wrecking squad from Austria called Mnozil Brass has created a combination circus band, village band, marching band, and vaudeville orchestra.

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Rock Concert Review: After Forty Years, Joe Jackson is Still “The Man”

February 16, 2019
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The show cemented Joe Jackson’s reputation as an inscrutable and enigmatic songwriter, a talented musician and social outsider who speaks for Everyman.

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