Review
Along with its slew of images — photos, sketches, and ephemera as well as album covers — WAIL offers what amounts to a compelling oral history of the mid-century explosion, not only of recorded jazz but of graphic design and, by extension, a burgeoning New York cultural scene.
Lauded in histories of Broadway but rarely performed, “Love Life” proves to be an insightful and effective work of social criticism, nearly eight decades after its premiere.
The poems in :World on a String” set an example for us all of how to live, to love, to release, and to remember.
What stands out for this reader is the humor Daniel Poppick mines from the quotidian.
Composer and bandleader Maria Schneider is a storyteller, and that’s the best way to approach her music for the first time. You listen like you read a short story, with your full attention, and your imagination synced with all of your senses.
Overall, the In the Fiddler’s House concert captured the infectious joy of this wondrous musical genre.
Yusef Komunyakaa and Laren McClung’s goal — achieved through tag-team lyric utterance — is a noble spirituality.
Considering its hard-to-fault premise, Peacock’s “The ‘Burbs” should be a lot more fun than it is.
While I heartily recommend “Sixties Surreal” as a provocative revisionist compendium or almanac, I know the volume will frustrate those who expect to find a conventional survey.
The book argues, convincingly, that Sid Caesar’s genius wasn’t in what he did or said so much as in the anarchistic energy he encouraged his writers to unleash and harness.
Arts Commentary: Superman, Spider-Man, and the American Art of Slugging Nazis