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Beyond the Golden Door: Jewish American Drama and Jewish American Experience by Julius Novick. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; paperback 2009, 200 pages. Reviewed by Caldwell Titcomb The Jewish presence in the United States goes back to the16th century. In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh recruited the expert Prague-born Jewish metallurgist and mining engineer Joachim Gans/Gaunse to join…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter made her Boston debut with a Celebrity Series recital in Jordan Hall on November 1. Now 36, she started playing in public at the age of eleven. For this appearance she offered music by Beethoven, Chopin, and Schumann.
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Somewhere an enterprising graduate student is working on a trenchant study of the correlation between holiday stage entertainment and the American economy. When things were looking bright and profitable the shows became cynical and comic, with mischievous elves placing whoopee cushions under our delusions of good cheer. Now that unemployment is high…
Read MoreThe tall multi-paned windows at Clink. look on to fall colors or the night, the river outside. The style is inviting, informal, and the food is elegant, the taste as good as it gets. Let’s clink to that. By Sally Steinberg Where in America is there a Filipino chef using Spanish arrope (candied pumpkin, for…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb Four youngish players, trained at the Juilliard School of Music, constituted themselves as the Chiara String Quartet. For several years they have held artist residency at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They have received a number of awards and prizes, and this season they are the Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University, where they…
Read MoreBy Helen Epstein 1) Nov 2: This Monday’s free concert at Jordan Hall celebrates Eastern European composers and players. The unusual musical line-up includes the Haydn Piano Trio in E minor, the Boston premiere of Kati Agócs’s “Awakening Galatea,” Bacewicz’s “Suite for Two Violins,” and Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A Major, Opus 81. Performance starts…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb You might not be aware of it, but the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra (HRO) is the oldest symphony orchestra in the country, having begun as the Pierian Sodality in 1808. For the past 45 years, the group was led by composer-conductor James Yannatos, who retired last June. So the HRO on October 24 gave…
Read MoreDead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl. Directed by Carmel O’Reilly. Produced by the the Lyric Stage Company at the YWCA Building on the corner of Clarendon Street and Stuart Street, Boston, MA, through November 14. Reviewed by Helen Epstein Improbable though it seems these days with multiple requests to turn off electronics before performances,…
Read Moreby Bill Marx The Boston Book Festival, which kicks off its existence this Saturday, is an inevitability that for some puzzling reason wasn’t a reality. Boston is a determinedly readerish town, yet it is the only one of America’s major cities that doesn’t have a book festival. Thankfully, BBF organizer Deborah Z. Porter remedies the…
Read MoreIt cannot be said that the average Omani was waiting for an exhibition of Rembrandt etchings. By Gary Schwartz “Frankincense from Oman and paintings by Rembrandt were both part of the good life in the 17th century.” That unlikely quotation is from the script of a film that I wrote and presented this summer to…
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