Review

Album Review: Singer/Songwriter Jake Bugg Approaches “Shangri La”

November 27, 2013
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Jake Bugg is hardly a punk, but he’s definitely acquired a bite that he didn’t have on his debut album.

Book Review: “The Hired Man” — A Powerful Novel about the Aftermath of War

November 27, 2013
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Aminatta Forna has given us a novel that belies its modest premise, a book about how the human mind protects itself by not knowing, yet sometimes, due to unexpected circumstances, comes to terms with what it thought it could not.

Concert Review: Wayne Shorter’s 80th Birthday Celebration — A Memorable Bash

November 26, 2013
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One doesn’t come away from a Wayne Shorter Quartet performance merely raving about individual accomplishments: the set on Sunday night never felt like just a compelling sequence of solos.

Poetry Review: The Unexpected Compassion of German Poet Gottfried Benn

November 25, 2013
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A collection of poems and essays by the admired German poet Gottfried Benn, who, because of his brief association with Nazism, has been absent from our mainstream, non-specialized, English-language view of modern German poetry.

Theater Review: “The Cocktail Hour” — A Pick-Me-Up for Waning WASPS

November 25, 2013
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With the 1% rapidly vacuuming up the resources of the upper and middle classes, A.R. Gurney’s comic vision of the tipsy idle rich, shorn of cares and criminality, floats completely free of reality.

Fuse Concert Review: Pianist Fred Hersch and Guitarist Julian Lage — A Sublime Duo

November 23, 2013
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The set was thrilling, full of the most intelligent byplay, and consistently songful. Chamber music doesn’t get any better than this.

Fuse Film Review: The “Hunger Games” Sequel — Better Than The First Time Around

November 22, 2013
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Jennifer Lawrence has blossomed into a charismatic screen presence in her gala return as Katniss, the beloved bow-and-arrow heroine of “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.”

Classical Music CD Reviews: Lang Lang plays Prokofiev and Bartók (Sony Classical), Philadelphia Orchestra plays Stravinsky (Deutsche Grammophon)

November 21, 2013
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So we’ve got a mixed bag. If you get this Lang Lang disc, it should be for the Bartók, but not the Prokofiev: as things stand, the competition there simply blows Lang out of the water.

Classical Music CD Reviews: Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Early Classical Opera

November 20, 2013
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Two discs released by Harmonia Mundi benefit from the dramatic flair of conductor René Jacobs.

Rock Album Review: Beady Eye — “BE” Good?

November 19, 2013
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At its best, “BE” is an adventurous album, which automatically makes it an improvement over Beady Eye’s 2011 debut.

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