Music

Concert Review: Pianist Jeremy Denk’s “Well-Tempered Clavier” — An Embarrassment of Riches

April 6, 2022
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I have heard many recordings of Bach’s work, but none had the vibrancy of what I heard in Jeremy Denk’s Sunday concert.

Rock Album Review: Elvis Costello’s “The Boy Named If” — Sly and Mischievous As Ever

April 5, 2022
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For all his verbal ingenuity, rousing chord progressions, and cynical smartass wit, Elvis Costello’s always tucked a raw, beating heart beneath his jaunty shades and devil-may-care grin.

Album Review: Club d’elf’s “You Never Know” — Spontaneous Magic

April 4, 2022
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This is the quintessential Club d’elf album, smartly arranged and surprisingly accessible without losing any of the group’s improvisational edges or exotic breadth.

Opera Album Review: The “Fidelio” Story a Year Before Beethoven’s Opera — and in Italian

March 30, 2022
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A new recording of Ferdinando Paër’s Leonora gives us characters we love (or love to hate) in a fresh light

Bluegrass Album Review: Molly Tuttle — Blurring the Boundaries between the Folksy and the Exploratory

March 29, 2022
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Crooked Tree is the Molly Tuttle record we’ve been waiting for, one that is firmly rooted in bluegrass, but imbued with her own sharp style as a guitarist, singer, and songwriter.

Book Review: “What’s Good: Notes on Rap and Language” — Finding Multitudes of Meaning

March 29, 2022
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To always be listening more and to therefore always be listening differently is of course the very nature of fandom, and to call What’s Good the work of a fan is not a putdown.

Pop Album Review: Beach House’s “Once Twice Melody” — Plenty of the Same Old Good Thing

March 28, 2022
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Once Twice Melody goes about refining rather than changing Beach House’s vision of dream pop.

Concert Review/Interview: America at Lowell Memorial Auditorium

March 28, 2022
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In Lowell, America played to a packed, enthusiastic, Centrum Silver-popping crowd who sang along with the band’s impressively deep roster of hits.

Music Commentary: Jean Sibelius’s Violin Concerto — The Universal Concerto?

March 27, 2022
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Sibelius’s Violin Concerto is almost something of a phenomenon now: in just eight months, I’ve heard it played by three different fiddlers — Baiba Skride, Lisa Batiashvili, and Inmo Yang.

Opera Album Review: Saint-Saëns’s Delightful Skewering of the West’s Fantasies of Japan

March 27, 2022
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A major contribution to the recorded repertory, making clear just how effective Saint-Saëns’s The Yellow Princess could be on stage, its nowadays objectionable title repudiated by its varied and nuanced approach to the evocation of the exotic.

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