Arts Fuse Editor
This family’s twelve-year-old daughter found Little Shop of Horrors to be funny, silly, and wholly enjoyable, further cementing her desire to be onstage as much and as often as possible in the future.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Dropkick Murphys shipped up to Lowell for their 2012 St. Patrick’s Day concert, and the Arts Fuse was there.
An unusual and powerful historical drama that looks at the troubled relationship between Jews and freed slaves at the end of The Civil War.
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.
Arts Commentary: The Orchestra Gap — Europe vs. the US