Year: 2012

Concert Review: A Superb Trio con Brio Copenhagen at Tuckerman Hall, Worcester

January 6, 2012
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The extraordinary intensity the ensemble achieved at soft dynamic levels and their very natural sense of the movement’s pacing were both quite impressive.

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Jazz Remembrance: Rivers Ran Deep

January 5, 2012
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It was with great sadness that I learned that on the day after Christmas 2011 pneumonia carried off an underappreciated giant of jazz, saxophonist and composer Sam Rivers. His 88 years took him on a long journey from his midwestern origins to decades here in Boston and later in New York to a rich late period in the somewhat improbable locale of Orlando, Florida.

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Fuse TV Preview: Fall Programs — Which Will Flourish and Which Fizzle?

January 5, 2012
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Now that the new year is here, midseason breaks are winding down, which makes it the perfect time to reflect on the television programs that premiered in the fall –- and will soon be back on screens across the country.

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Short Fuse Film Review: Getting to Know Paul Goodman

January 4, 2012
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Paul Goodman was a professed anarchist — not the bomb-throwing kind, who believe destruction is foreplay to solution, but the anti-violent kind, deriving from the nineteenth century Russian thinker, Kropotkin, who espoused cooperation among free individuals.

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Book Review: Getting Down and Dirty in the Dollhouse: Ibsen and the Kardashians

January 4, 2012
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An underground academic critic explores the fascinating intersections between the Kardashian sisters’ novel “Dollhouse” and Ibsen’s play “A Doll House.” The more things change …

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Movie Review: Of Vice and Men — “A Dangerous Method”

January 4, 2012
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“A Dangerous Method” fits neatly into director David Cronenberg’s body of work, which is often obsessed with a body-mind connection.

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Fuse Concert Review: Boston Baroque at Sanders Theater, January 1, 2012

January 2, 2012
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Boston Baroque closed out 2011 and began 2012 with an engaging program of pieces by Corelli, Handel, Bach, and Vivaldi that featured some rather unfamiliar instruments and repertoire. Martin Pearlman, the group’s founder and music director, conducted this thoroughly enjoyable concert.

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Film Review: Those Cuddly and Krazy Klezmatics

January 2, 2012
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The documentary “The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground” is pleasing to watch, but there are a number of ways of respecting as well as loving great artists, the most important being coming up with the chutzpah necessary to ask the tough questions that generate illuminating, inspiring, or interesting answers.

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Book Review/Commentary: Why Lionel Trilling — and Serious Criticism — Matters

January 1, 2012
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The essential task of the critic is not to like or dislike the arts or to push bromides, such as to celebrate the “power of reading.” Despite some troublesome modifications, Lionel Trilling carries on the mission of E.A. Poe and Henry James: he articulates the value of the serious act of judgment in a culture hostile to it.

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