Music
For all of the music’s fury, protest, anguish, and raw brutality, Tattoo the Earth was a lovefest.
The sound of both musicians is indelible: trumpeter Enrico Rava is warm and rounded; pianist Fred Hersch, often icy, is fetching and detailed.
There’s little doubt at this point regarding the 26-year-old guitarist’s talent for pulling multiple influences into one cohesive, original sound.
It is always heartening for an album to live up to its much-anticipated buildup. It is even more reassuring that, after nearly four decades, The Goo Goo Dolls are breaking new ground.
An opera from Fascist Italy, Gino Marinuzzi’s Palla de’ Mozzi receives a splendid world-premiere recording. Should you listen despite its pedigree?
“Farewell” is the shortest album in the series, but it is perhaps the most provocative in the way it calmly muses, philosophically, on the form that togetherness can take – as it exists and as it dissolves.
The saxophonist has the slithery facility of a bebopper, but I also hear something of the forthright stance of Coltrane in his playing, despite the rhythmic complexity of his writing — and his distinctively varied use of his Puerto Rican background.
A world-premiere recording of Richard Flury’s fascinating 1935 opera about love, deceit, and the possibility of forgiveness.
Age certainly wasn’t an issue in terms of energy. Elvis Costello played for a solid two hours with barely a break, running through four decades of music with a heavy emphasis on the old favorites.

Recent Comments