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Commentary Drill Down: Claus Ogerman’s “Symbiosis”

February 1, 2012
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Fuse Jazz Critic Steve Elman is currently surveying works that illuminate the tradition of the jazz-influenced piano concerto. His series began with an examination of Chick Corea’s current recording, The Continents. In part two, he takes a look at eight works by jazz composers that precede the release of Corea’s work. This post is a…

Classical Music Sampler: February 2012

February 1, 2012
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February feels like the ‘New November’: concerts of real interest during the weekdays and too many great concerts during the weekends.

TV Commentary: Why the SAG Awards is the Most Viewer-friendly Awards Show

January 31, 2012
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The SAG Awards have everything you want, and very little you don’t. The ceremony celebrates film and television, so it’s always star-packed, and only honors actors, so you don’t have to sit through hours of awards for Best Sound Editing.

Fuse Concert Review: A Lively Anonymous 4

January 31, 2012
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The Anonymous 4 went through their medieval and early Renaissance paces, vibrato-less but historically informed and performed.

Visual Arts Feature: Me and Philip Guston

January 30, 2012
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Our discussions always took the same turn. Philip Guston attempted to convince me that artists like Piero della Francesca and the cave painters of Lascaux were in the first place abstractionists.

Concert Review: Boston Symphony Orchestra/Bramwell Tovey Light Up Symphony Hall

January 30, 2012
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After the “Lobgesang”’s premiere, Robert Schumann declared this movement “a glimpse of heaven filled with Raphael’s madonnas,” and Saturday’s performance by the BSO came about as close to that as one could imagine, sensitively phrased and beautifully blended.

Classical Music Review: BMOP Revitalizes the Concept of a Concerto Concert

January 29, 2012
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Though there were differences in quality between the compositions in the BMOP concert, all of the pieces fulfilled the primary requirement of a concerto: they showed off the capabilities of the solo instrument in question, often memorably so.

Coming Attractions in Film: February 2012

January 29, 2012
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You may be still catching up on the Academy Award, Golden Globe, People’s Choice, or SAG picks. But this month offers some rare and wonderful treats for film fans of all kinds.

Book Review: Niccolò Ammaniti’s “Me and You” — a lightly charming, digestible morsel

January 27, 2012
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Italian writer Niccolò Ammaniti usually writes with an unadorned style about moral predicaments of the young in small-town Italy. “Me and You,” a slender effort in all respects, covers this ground as well, with the difference that fourteen-year-old protagonist Lorenzo Cumi is from an affluent Roman family.

Book Interview: S.T. Joshi on Ambrose Bierce — The Underappreciated Genius of Being Grim

January 24, 2012
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Bierce proffers a satiric temperament gone wild and woolly, partly propelled by a revulsion at the criminal vulgarity of the Gilded Age. Given the current triumph of the 1%, his fury at power mad corporations is worth an admiring look.

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