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Rock Album Preview: The Return of Little Feat — A Revival of the Fittest

April 30, 2025
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Little Feat is on the cusp of a rebirth – again.

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Television Review: “Étoile” Puts a Promising Dramatic Spotlight on Ballet

April 29, 2025
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All of the gritty challenges for today’s ballet companies are touched on in “Étoile”, including financial troubles, union strikes, rapaciously controlling donors, jealous, egomaniacal dancers, and more bumps in the road.

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Visual Arts Review: Jim Dine Prints — A Vocabulary of Feelings

April 29, 2025
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Every subject in Jim Dine’s richly rendered work seems to edge towards something other than itself, deeper and more personal.

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Book Review: “Sargent and Paris” — Sargent and Amnesia

April 29, 2025
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I wish this catalogue spelled out John Singer Sargent’s professional stance as a “juste milieu” painter more methodically. That term refers to those eager to be associated with new stylistic tendencies yet careful not to transgress the establishment’s norms.

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Film Reviews: At the Independent Film Festival Boston — Shorts Dartmouth: Narrative

April 26, 2025
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The Independent Film Festival Boston has been a major showcase for short films from New England and beyond. Here’s a roundup of one of this year’s programs, “Shorts Dartmouth: Narrative” (collections are named after streets in the Back Bay). There’s not a weak one in the five-film bunch.

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Jazz Album Review: “Izipho Zam (My Gifts)” — A Sign of Its Time

April 26, 2025
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Perhaps “Izipho Zam (My Gifts)” might have become as well known as Pharoah Sanders’s “Karma” — if Impulse! rather than the tiny cooperative label Strata-East had recorded it.

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Theater Review: “The Obligation to Live” — Defying the Machinery of Death

April 25, 2025
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The emphasis of the B&P troupe has become increasingly apocalyptic: the struggle we are engaged in is for nothing less than the preservation of our planet, and for the preservation of our individual — and collective ––hearts and minds.

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Visual Arts Review: “Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon” — Art Harmonious

April 25, 2025
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While he paints, Stanley Whitney listens to and is inspired by jazz. Miles Davis’s album “Bitches Brew” is his constant companion in the studio.

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Jazz Album Reviews: Stanley Cowell and Music Inc. — The Sounds of Independence

April 25, 2025
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These Stata-East recordings are the result of a special moment in the history of jazz, when some musicians brilliantly took charge of their own careers. Luckily for us, the music is still strikingly fresh and contemporary.

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Arts Commentary: From the Editor’s Desk — By Popular Demand, 2025

April 24, 2025
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Back in February of 2024 I began to write a weekly column for AF newsletter on Substack. A few readers have asked that I post these opinion pieces in the magazine. Here is a selection of my favorites of 2025

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