Music
Not only is Fetch the Bolt Cutters the most stunning of Apple’s five albums, it’s the most impressive pop record of this young pandemic year, its bottled turmoil speaking to our own pent-up nerves.
What’s happening right now, this is a bloodbath. It is full on slaughter of small businesses. They lie in the streets gasping for breath.
The Strokes are finally growing up — and their maturity is a sight to behold.
The two best things about Simon Rattle’s new recording of Die Walküre are, well, Rattle, himself, and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; a strongly played and majestically sung performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s unfairly neglected Die erste Walpurgisnacht.
More proof that Offenbach’s is a remarkable body of work; a serviceable, but not particularly notable, Cavalleria rusticana; another installment in the Rossini Project, brilliantly curated, stirringly played and sung, and beautifully recorded.
A terrific release showcases the Boston Symphony Orchestra and composer Thomas Adès. Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony deliver a radiantly honest recording of Aaron Copland’s Symphony 3.
Darkness is pervasive in this Cowboy Junkies album, but it is not all-encompassing.
Sigma Oasis is one of Phish’s better albums since the group reunited in 2009 after a five-year breakup.
Many of the qualities that mark Penderecki’s best work – exquisite technique, an innate feel for rhythmic athleticism, an ear for dazzling colors and theatrical gestures, an impeccable sense of musical structure, and the affinity for emotional immediacy – are also hallmarks of Rouse’s.
Arts Remembrance: Saxophonist Lee Konitz
Lee Konitz was, with Sonny Rollins, one of the last of his great generation of jazz men still swinging hard.
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