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Book Review: Celebrating the Forceful Art of “Three Strong Women”

August 14, 2012
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In the heartrending “Three Strong Women,” award-winning novelist Marie NDiaye infuses her Senegalese women characters with a personal sense of dignity and a strong belief in self.

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Fuse Opera Review/Commentary: A Magisterial “Lost in the Stars” at Glimmerglass

August 13, 2012
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When the performance ended and I sat there, silent, reveling with the rest of the audience in the goose bumps that inevitably occur after such an experience, I knew, in my bones, that no movie, however good, could be as good as this.

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Fuse Theater Review: A Mildly Amusing “Third Story”

August 13, 2012
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There are plenty of amusing moments when dramatist Charles Busch makes effective use of his gift for exaggerated wit and whimsy — no dramatist can drop the word ‘canasta’ with as much hilarious finesse.

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Visual Arts Essay: What is a Moment? — Two paintings of the wounded Eurydice by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot

August 12, 2012
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Of course, I have no idea what was in Corot’s mind. But the juxtaposition of these images appears to me to present two different moments in time, perhaps adjacent ones, perhaps as close as possible, like adjacent frames of a film.

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Short Fuse Film Review: Dissident Artist Ai Weiwei — The Anti-Mao

August 11, 2012
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Dissident artist Ai Weiwei speaks for an alternate China, another possibility for it. In a sense, he is the anti-Mao. Alison Klayman’s “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” is an essential introduction to his work to date.

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Coming Attractions in Jazz: Late Summer Festivals 2012

August 10, 2012
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The tents and stages have come down in Newport, and now the action shifts west to Connecticut, home of the superb Litchfield Jazz Festival. Later in the month, it’s party time in Salem, MA with Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

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Theater Commentary/Review: A Not So Dumb “Month in The Country”

August 10, 2012
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Given the Russian writer’s modernist pedigree, should director/playwright Richard Nelson and translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky be punished for putting some “unevenesses” into their staging of Turgenev’s finest play, “A Month in the Country”? I think not.

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Coming Attractions in Jazz: (early) August 2012

August 9, 2012
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Percussionist Vicente Lebron

Updated Aug. 9 at 3 p.m. In the second week of August, the power of percussion is much in evidence, with Mikael Ringquist and Marcus Santos, Manolo Mairena, Gary Fieldman, and Vicente Lebron. New Orleans adds some flavor with Christian Scott and Galactic, and Berklee Summer in the City just keeps rolling along.

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Folk Concert Review: Newport Folk Festival 2012

August 9, 2012
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I’m sure organizers are not losing a lot of sleep over controversies about the definition of “folk” music since festivals are selling out.

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CD Review: Tanglewood 75th Anniversary Celebration, Live and Uncensored, Part One

August 9, 2012
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Here is Tanglewood live and uncensored, as it were, with music often thrillingly brought to life by some of the hallowed legends of the BSO’s storied past: Koussevitzky, Monteux, Munch, Leinsdorf, Ozawa, Bernstein, Previn -— the list goes on and on.

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