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The narrative turns out to have the blandly cheerful tone and slightly stilted prose of an official biography: the sort of thing with the CEO’s picture on the cover, given out at stockholders meetings. Chuck Close: Life, by Christopher Finch. Prestel, 352 pages, $34.95. Reviewed by Peter Walsh In these media-saturated, image-obsessed times, every public…
Read MoreWorking with Bernstein: A Memoir by Jack Gottlieb. Amadeus Press, 370 pages, $24.99. Reviewed by Caldwell Titcomb A strong case can be made that the late Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was the all-round greatest musician our country has produced—virtuoso pianist, composer of both classical and popular music, the most charismatic conductor of his century, acclaimed educator…
Read MoreAs a theatrical event, The American Stage anthology would have to be classified as a rousing vaudeville show: there are literary routines for all brows—high, middle, and low. The American Stage: Writings on Theater from Washington Irving to Tony Kushner, edited by Laurence Senelick, Library of America, 867 pages, $40. By Bill Marx “There is…
Read MoreBy J. R. Carroll Photo by Nicole LeCorgne Jazz festivals come in all shapes and sizes these days, even within the modest geographical confines of New England. Up in Vermont, the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival is still in progress; among others, you can still catch Jim Hall on Friday, June 11, and Sonny Rollins the…
Read MorePerhaps independent music’s biggest “it” band right now, The National have recently released their fifth album, and appear on the brink of crossing the threshold from well-kept secret to mainstream sensation, if their recent back-to-back sold out shows at Boston’s House of Blues are any indication. By Justin Marble In college, I took a comparative…
Read MoreBy Justin Marble June 11–17, Grindhouse films at The Brattle: Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s 2007 double feature reignited interest in the campy, cheap, and cheesy B-movies of the grindhouse era. These highly-enjoyable and ridiculous films are an experience unto themselves. With esteemed titles like Black Cobra, Chained Heat, Lady Terminator, and Thrill of the…
Read MoreBy Helen Epstein Shakespeare & Company’s new director Tony Simotes is in his last week of radiation and chemotherapy for throat cancer in Boston, but he was in the Berkshires this weekend to preside over the first read-through of Richard III.
Read MorePerhaps the inspirational cliches, by-the-numbers storyline, and fan cartoon hijinks are what’s expected in a baseball musical. Johnny Baseball, Music by Robert Reale, Lyrics by Willie Reale, Book by Richard Dresser. Story by Dresser and Reale. Directed by Diane Paulus. Staged by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge, MA, through July…
Read MoreBy Peter Walsh It’s a hot weather tradition. Generations of American artists have followed the seasonal migration out of hot, sticky, eastern cities to Cape Cod (Edward Hopper, Hans Hoffman), the North Shore (Winslow Homer, Childe Hassan, Stuart Davis, Mark Rothko), and the Berkshires (Daniel Chester French, Norman Rockwell ). Besides their work, they left…
Read MoreBy Thomas Samph This month’s music selection is all about trying something new. One of my selected artists recorded her entire album in a church. One guy kissed another guy on stage at an awards show that was on live TV. And another group brings together nine solo acts under one dirty name that has…
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