Steve Elman
A writer has to write for the now or to write for the ages. Gleason almost always chose the now, but his best moments go deeper.
Jazz groups of eight to eleven often make fascinating and unusual music, but they rarely survive.
Murray Talks Music shows how brilliant Albert Murray could be even when he didn’t have time to polish his prose.
Both David Bowie and Norbert Stein present distinctive and subtle approaches to the hybridizing of poetry and music.
The BSO’s Americana concert could only provide four beautiful snapshots of a very complicated landscape.
The great mistake we make as listeners or viewers is passivity. Music deserves and needs our active involvement.
What we know of mass-market choice suggests that the more choices a person has, the more likely it is that the person will be dissatisfied with any one choice.
Much more work could be done fertilizing the fields of cross-cultural music, sowing seeds collected from the great touchstones of American culture – innovation, integration, risk, reward.
I would like to think that there are more composers working today who think of themselves as beyond category.
Jazz Performance and CD Review / Commentary: Jane Ira Bloom’s “Wild Lines” and “Early Americans”
Exposing the jazz impulses in Emily Dickinson’s poetry is not an agenda for the novice.
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