Arts Fuse Editor

Music Review: The Touré-Raichel Collective — Nothing If Not Surprising

April 24, 2012
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Between songs Touré and Raichel conferred inaudibly with one another, deciding which tune they would play next. There was very little chatting up the audience, until before the fourth song. Raichel said “Hello, Boston.” Touré asked, “How you doing?” and the audience roared.

Book Review: “Jane Eyre” Rewired — “The Flight of Gemma Hardy”

April 22, 2012
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Author Margo Livesey has pulled off a considerable literary trick: a page-turner that is also a moving, realistic, subtle, and eminently wise coming-of-age novel.

Fuse Commentary: All Cultural Things Shining at the Oscars

April 8, 2012
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The core claim of the book is that the contemporary culture is nihilistic in outlook, but unnecessarily so. The authors believe there to be a remedy to our debilitating amnesia —- to integrate our lives, in some ways, into the world as perceived by our cultural forefathers.

Book Review: Beyond Plums and Wheelbarrows — A New Biography of William Carlos Williams

April 8, 2012
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For the reader who is not already a William Carlos Williams enthusiast, the biography provides a good corrective to the Norton Anthology picture of Williams as the poet of tiny images, of plums and red wheelbarrows and fire engines with big gold letters.

CD Review: Basya Schechter Sings “Songs of Wonder”

April 7, 2012
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This CD marks a turning point: a solo effort by Basya Schechter with outstanding back-up by a wide range of musicians that features music based on the Yiddish poetry of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Concert Review: Lowell House Opera Presents “Snegurochka”

March 23, 2012
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Although there is room for improvement, the singers engage each other, as well as the orchestra, with vigor and skill, making for a satisfying “Snegurochka” in Russian.

Music Photos: The Dropkick Murphys Drive the Snakes out of Lowell

March 19, 2012
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The Dropkick Murphys shipped up to Lowell for their 2012 St. Patrick’s Day concert, and the Arts Fuse was there.

Theater Review: Freedom for “The Whipping Man”

March 11, 2012
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An unusual and powerful historical drama that looks at the troubled relationship between Jews and freed slaves at the end of The Civil War.

Book Review: So You Say You Want a Revolution? “Democratic Enlightenment”

March 6, 2012
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Jonathan I. Israel has written a monumental three-volume history of the Enlightenment, approximately 2500 pages long, not including three lengthy bibliographies. His erudition is fabulous; his range is dizzying.

Theater Review: The Immortality of The Addams Family

February 10, 2012
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What more could you ask than that a musical comedy version of The Addams Family cast a kooky spell?

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