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“Blue Bossa in the Bronx” brings us into a jazz club on a good night. It’s unlike any other Kenny Dorham session, which makes it valuable indeed.
There are unplanned moments in this three LP collection, times when the musicians seem to be waiting to hear what is going to happen next. Something exciting usually does come out of their interactions.
Though lapsing at times into hagiography and muddled synopsizing, James Miller’s study of filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar is a bracing reminder of the greatness and ever-evolving genius of this world-class artist.
The fact that readers have dismissed Jim as a fool or have misunderstood Mark Twain’s intent in Huckleberry Finn reflects on our limitations.
With visionary daring, Elllen Wilbur leads us into unexpected corners, then transcends them profoundly and beyond expectation. Such stories are more than “moral fictions.” They are soul-shakers.
Junior Programs undertook “a visionary rethinking of the potential relationship between the performing arts and the lives of the nation’s children, with the specific artistic innovations emerging organically from that rethinking”.
It is serendipitous that James Ehnes added Brahms’ two viola sonatas to his repertoire; Patrick Messina, Lise Berthaud, and Fabrizio Chiovetta’s new recording of Bruch’s “8 Pieces for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano” serves the piece admirably.
Given the current state of the world, we need more shows that not only entertain, but reflect the importance of community. And, if those programs accurately portray a close-knit group of people that has been misrepresented, all the better.
Arts Remembrance: Francis Davis, 1946-2025
There are few critics as worth re-reading as the late Francis Davis, whose writings are filled with musical and cultural insight, erudition, literary grace, and, most valued now, humor.
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