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Concert Review: Newport Folk Festival 2021 — A Very Nontraditional Year

July 30, 2021
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Folk On both exceeded and tempered expectations.

Jazz Album Review: Tobias Meinhart’s “The Painter” — A Very Pretty Picture

July 30, 2021
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This is state-of-the-art modern jazz with an up-and-coming lead soloist, well-chosen guests, and a dream rhythm section.

Poetry Review: Maureen N. McLane’s “More Anon” — Lots of Existential Fun

July 29, 2021
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Her poems are sassy.

Classical Album Review: “The Other Cleopatra”—Three Major Opera Composers Bring Us the Forgotten Queen of Armenia

July 29, 2021
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A delightful recording — and the first ever! — of arias from Hasse’s and Gluck’s operas about Tigranes and Cleopatra of Pontus. Plus four arias by Vivaldi for that same Cleopatra.

Blues Album Review: Christone “Kingfish” Ingram’s “662” — A Mature Triumph

July 28, 2021
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662 will appeal to hard-core blues fans along with those who want more of a hyphenated blues sound, be it blues-rock, blues-funk or blues-pop.

Book Review: “Disquiet” — A Compassionate Litany of Tragedies in the Middle East

July 28, 2021
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This is a timely novel, a lament for the multicultural harmony that has disappeared from Mesopotamia as well as a dire warning: fundamentalism is on the rise, not just in the Middle East but in the West as well.

Film Review: “Stillwater” Runs Superficial

July 28, 2021
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The irony is that this effort, surely not the last, of Hollywood reaching out to the “solid” citizens of Trump’s America will only alienate them further.

Jazz Album Review: Valuable Blasts from the Past — Bill Evans and Roy Hargrove & Mulgrew Miller

July 27, 2021
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Two previously unreleased archival recordings take us on trips into the past well worth taking.

Theater Commentary: Healers, Cool Your Heels

July 27, 2021
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Throughout history, theater has been a place where the community has looked honestly at what is killing it.

Opera Album Review: August Enna’s Wagnerian “Kleopatra” — Revived on Danish Soil After 122 Years

July 27, 2021
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August Enna’s colorful and vividly melodramatic score does justice to the robust exoticism of H. Rider Haggard’s novel.

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