Review

Classical Album Reviews: “For Clara” and “Bach Minimaliste”

September 26, 2023
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Reviews of Hélène Grimaud’s latest homage to Clara Schumann and La Tempête investigates seeming stylistic overlaps in the music of J. S. Bach, Henryk Górecki, Jehan Alain, Knut Nystedt, and John Adams.

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Theater Review: “POTUS, Or Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive”

September 25, 2023
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“POTUS” supplies plenty of political amusement as it pits savvy, competent women against the blithering males running the American government.

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Film Review: “Fair Play” — All’s Fowl in Love and Business

September 25, 2023
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The unpleasantness of the film’s first sex scene turns out to be a foreshadowing of a refreshingly curdled vision of insecurity in the 21st century.

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Theater Commentary: Impressions of Canada’s Shaw Festival 2023, Part Two

September 23, 2023
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Canada is far enough from New York and Broadway to ignore their siren drum beats.

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Opera Album Review: A Sprightly First Recording of Auber’s Love-Potion Opera

September 23, 2023
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Auber’s 1831 “Le Philtre” (“The Love Potion”) is an engaging romp that helped give birth to Donizetti’s “L’elisir d’amore.” Immensely popular in his own day, why isn’t it revived more often?

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Electronic EP Review: DE DE MOUSE & Shin-Ski’s “Rainbowtime” – The Consolation of Creation

September 23, 2023
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By Jeremy Ray Jewell Call it lofi or chillwave. Whatever it is, it’s worth it. Daisuke Endo, a.k.a. DE DE MOUSE, has released his new EP, Rainbowtime, in collaboration with fellow Japanese artist Shin-Ski. It is, as Endo describes it, based on “the theme of a world connected to fantasy during the magic time of…

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Film Review: “My Animal” — The Beast Within

September 22, 2023
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In her debut feature, music video director Jacqueline Castel supplies a moody and explicitly queer spin on the metaphor of monster as a maligned queer subject.

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Film Festival Reviews: TIFF 2023 — Human Remains in the North and More from Finland

September 22, 2023
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Four reviews of films about existence — past and present — for the marginalized in Scandinavia.

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Jazz Album Review: “Basie Swings the Blues” — Blues-Soaked Big Band Jazz

September 21, 2023
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It’s good to hear the Basie band stretch. But it’s even better to hear them exult the blues with their own time-honored style leading the way.

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YA Book Review: “A Tall Dark Trouble” — Witchy Doings in Cuba and Florida

September 20, 2023
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I’m happy to add the brujas of “A Tall Dark Magic” to my own personal spell book featuring the names of the witches I love.

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