Featured

CULTURE VULTURE IN THE BERKSHIRES

July 20, 2009
Posted in , , ,

A true embarrassment of riches in the Berkshires this summer, with almost every cultural institution in the county scheduling round-the-clock events and package deals designed to attract even the least culturally interested among us. By Helen Epstein James Levine conducts pianist Leon Fleischer and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood (Photo Credit: Hilary Scott) Last…

World Books Update

July 17, 2009
Posted in , ,

By Bill Marx You want a racy, nineteenth-century epic about sex, sin, drugs, and prostitution set in China? Here it is. Two more pieces on international fiction for World Books, the feature I edit for PRI’s The World.

Theater Commentary: Last of the Red Hot Anachronisms

July 11, 2009
Posted in ,

By Bill Marx If the age turns away from the theater, in which it is no longer interested, that is because the theater has ceased to represent it. It no longer hopes to be provided by the theater with myths on which it can sustain itself. –- Antonin Artaud

World Books Update

July 4, 2009
Posted in , ,

By Bill Marx I am juggling editing and writing duties between two blogs, theartsfuse and World Books for the website of BBC/PRI’s radio program The World, which is produced at WGBH in Boston. The section aims to be a critical conversation made up of reviews, commentaries, interviews, podcasts, and news stories about international literature. Respected…

Classical Music Review: Kalifornia Kids Konquer Kambridge

June 29, 2009
Posted in , ,

By Caldwell Titcomb The Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra (PACO), made up of the most talented high-school string players in California’s Bay Area, kicked off its first East Coast tour with an impressive June 27 concert in Harvard’s Sanders Theatre before a large audience that spilled over into the balcony.

Classical Music Review: It’s ‘Sick Puppy’ Time

June 18, 2009
Posted in , ,

By Caldwell Titcomb Attention has shifted from the very old to the very new: the Boston Early Music Festival ended on June 14, and June 13 saw the start of the eight-day 2009 Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice at the New England Conservatory (NEC).

Theater Review: Of Sex, Death, and Ducks

June 16, 2009
Posted in , ,

By Bill Marx Let us hob-and-nob with Death — Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Duck Variations by David Mamet. Directed by Marcus Stern. Sexual Perversity in Chicago by David Mamet. Directed by Paul Stacey. Presented by the American Repertory Theatre at Zero Arrow Street, Cambridge, MA, through June 28. Death be not mentioned in David Mamet’s…

Short Fuse: Xiangqi Fever

June 15, 2009
Posted in

By Harvey Blume To play Xiangqi (Chinese chess) as earnestly as I have been lately is to revisit a familiar situation, one in which I am at the gateway of another culture, hungry for the experience, but positioned as a junior. That was the case with African drumming and with neurological difference, for example, especially…

Opera Review: ‘L’Incoronazione di Poppea’

June 9, 2009
Posted in , ,

By Caldwell Titcomb If you know a bit about opera, you will have heard of Verdi – but perhaps not of Monteverdi. Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) was the first major composer in the history of opera, and the biennial Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) is presenting his last opera, “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” (“The Coronation of Poppaea”)…

Book Feature: Poet Liao Yiwu — Memories of the Tiananmen Square “Massacre”

May 29, 2009
Posted in , ,

June 3 marks the 20th anniversary of the brutal suppression of the Tiananmen student movement. To mark the occasion, here is the story behind Massacre, an epic poem about the violence that landed its author in jail.

Recent Posts

Popular Posts

Categories

Archives