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Television Review: Hulu’s “The Great” — Russian Tyranny for Laughs

May 20, 2020
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In The Great, Tony McNamara proves that period pieces that pit conniving yet sympathetic women against tyrannical men can make for a kind of refreshingly cathartic entertainment.

Poetry Review: “The Mother House” — Poems with the Demeanor of Nuns

May 19, 2020
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In these poems, contemplation, serenity, and service are the order of the day.

Music Documentary Review: “Up From the Streets” — New Orleans’ History of Oppression and Creativity

May 18, 2020
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Up From the Streets is no New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival — but it tries.

Book Review: “Vanishing Monuments” — An Unforgettable Memory Palace

May 18, 2020
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Vanishing Monuments is painstaking, in the literal sense of that compound word: it took enormous pain to make this book. It’s a novel that, for all its organizational strategies, reads with the immediacy of a memoir.

Literary Remembrance: Homage to Guy Davenport — Brilliance Worth Savoring

May 18, 2020
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The fifteenth anniversary of the death of a grievously neglected writer whom critics almost universally acclaim a creative genius.

Music Appreciation: Two American Musical Geniuses Named Steve, on Their Birthdays — Sondheim and Wonder

May 18, 2020
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Musical theater giant Stephen Sondheim turned 90 on March 22, and Stevie Wonder—for my money, the greatest popular music composer of the last 60 years—turned 70 on May 13.

Opera CD Review: Gunther Schuller’s Splendid 1970 Children’s Opera Gets Its World-Premiere Recording

May 17, 2020
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A Grimm, but not grim, opera about a Fisherman, his Wife, their Cat, and a wish-granting Flounder.

Book Review: “The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana” — A Caribbean Hamlet

May 17, 2020
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Told from the perspective of the Global South, this novel enthralls as it explores the urgent economic and cultural contradictions of post-colonialism, globalization, class, and alienation.

Jazz Album Review: Brian Landrus’s “For Now” — With Strings Attached

May 16, 2020
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Saxophonist Brian Landrus seems to know what he’s got in this magnificent trio: Fred Hersch on piano, Drew Gress on bass, and Billy Hart on drums.

Podcast Review: Ode to “36 From the Vault”: My COVID-19 Escape

May 15, 2020
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Who wants timely now? I sure as hell don’t. I want an escape and a podcast dedicated to the Grateful Dead’s live career is easy to get blissfully lost in.

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