Review

Opera Album Review: Offenbach in a Spanish Mood, in a Top-notch First Recording

October 1, 2020
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Bravo to the Bru Zane folks for this latest triumph! I encourage opera lovers to get to know this treasurable Spanish (or faux-Spanish) work by the pioneering master of nineteenth-century operetta.

Book Review: “Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong” — The King of All Kings

September 30, 2020
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He may be extreme as a polemicist, but Ricky Riccardi shines when he sticks to jazz’s history. 

Television Review: “Filthy Rich” — Crass Warfare

September 30, 2020
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For fans of novellas, Filthy Rich will be a trashy guilty pleasure.

Jazz Concert Review: The Lloyd-Hussain-Lage Trio — Live from Healdsburg

September 30, 2020
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Charles Lloyd and Julian Lage and Zakir Hussain served a loose, flowing 65-minute set with complementary facility that belied the novel circumstances.

Theater Review: Penny Arcade — Provincetown, Puritans, and the Pandemic

September 29, 2020
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I’ve hated enough people,” Penny Arcade confessed, “I can’t hate anyone new until 2022.”

Concert Review: Farm Aid 2020 — The Promise of the Real

September 29, 2020
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When Willie dove into “On the Road Again” to close the set, singing of “making music with my friends,” one could envision the same hopes for Farm Aid to resume its annual trek to an amphitheater somewhere in America and stoke the communal cause.

Opera Album Review: A Terrific Recording of a Handel Pathbreaker — Powered by a Rock-Star Mezzo-Soprano

September 28, 2020
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Agrippina (1709), an enormous hit at the Met this past season, proves, by turns, gripping, sardonic, and exquisite.

Film Review: “Cuties” — Girls Just Wanna Have Smartphones

September 26, 2020
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The real problem is the obsessive engagement with social media platforms that encourages attention-seeking behavior, and rewards it.

Folk Album Review: Tyler Childers’s “Long Violent History” – An Appalachian Murder Ballad for Breonna Taylor

September 26, 2020
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The Kentuckian’s message is one of both heritage and empathy — and the necessity of both.

Jazz Album Review: “Monk: Palo Alto” — An Unlikely but Welcome Discovery

September 25, 2020
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This 1969 concert by the Thelonious Monk Quartet was produced by a high school student and recorded by his school’s janitor. It presents this particular group at its optimistic best.

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