Review

Film Interview: “Ira Gitler Lives” — From Bret Primack, Jazz Documentarian Extraordinaire

April 24, 2019
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“The half-hearted support of jazz by American broadcast TV, be it commercial or PBS or cable, has been an insult not only to the artists, but to the public as well.”

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Concert Music Review: Violinist Itzhak Perlman and Pianist Evgeny Kissin — An Odd Dream Team

April 23, 2019
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A bit surprising — that two megastars choose such meat and potatoes repertoire.

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Film Review: “High Life” — Messy, Earthy Existentialism, In Outer Space

April 21, 2019
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In space, no one can hear you go extinct.

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Book Review: “The Ruins of Ani” — Into the Mystic

April 19, 2019
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The Ruins of Ani illuminates one of those rare places that leaves visitors feeling they might have to dust off the word mystical to describe the experience.

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Book Review: “In Search of Stonewall” — Illuminating Queer History

April 19, 2019
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The essays here give readers an eyewitness glimpse into mid-century queer life will intrigue (if not shock) younger LGBT+ people.

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Jazz CD Review/Commentary: Holly Cole — Sticking to the Standards

April 18, 2019
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I did want to use this CD as a springboard to engage with the question of how using material of a certain age tends to pre-select — and limit — listenership.

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Book Review: “The Club” — When One Lived for Good Conversation

April 18, 2019
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The Club is an entertaining and absorbing journey to another century, when the art of communication and the spirit of thoughtful engagement attracted men and women of acute sensibilities.

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Book Review: “The Ideas That Made America” — Not Made in America

April 17, 2019
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Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen’s The Ideas That Made America provides an exciting, if quicksilver, tour through intellectual history.

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Film Review: “The Chaperone” — Smothered in the Spiffy

April 16, 2019
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The Chaperone plays like a sanitized look at female independence and sexual desire for the prudish over-50s crowd.

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Concert Review: Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets — The Early Brilliance of Pink Floyd

April 15, 2019
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Drummer Nick Mason and his four non-Floyd bandmates turned Boston’s Orpheum Theater into a psychedelic palace.

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