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Poetry Remembrance: John Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes” — Forever Young at 200

September 29, 2020
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Keats is comfortable in that ambiguous space between reality and the imagination, and you will find no finer example of Romantic poetry when he fuses them in the language of an erotic dream.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Jazz Remembrance: Ira Sullivan

September 26, 2020
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In no way was the recognition that Ira Sullivan received commensurate with his skill.

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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.

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Theater Commentary: Boston Stages — Running from Reality?

September 25, 2020
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Are our theaters indifferent, craven, or complicit? Take your pick.

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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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Arts Commentary: “The Death of the Artist” — Culture Workers Unite!

September 24, 2020
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The shared baseline of these conversations is that there are no good old days to go back to. If the cultural sector in the United States returns to the ways things were organized in February, 2020, with all the inequity and unsustainability that implies, we will have failed.

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Jazz Album Reviews: Mesmerized By Vinyl — Newvelle, Louis Armstrong, and Stan Getz

September 24, 2020
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Playing vinyl involves holding something in your hand, putting a needle down and, at least on my high end system, listening to sound quality that can mesmerize.

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