Allen Michie

Jazz Album Review: The Yellowjackets Celebrate Turning 40 — With a Big Band

November 17, 2020
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Now that ¾ of the Yellowjackets are eligible for Social Security, the emphasis is more on confirming a legacy of creative compositions and expanding their art of arranging with a broader range of colors.

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World Music CD Reviews: Percussionist Julian Gerstin and Guitarist Todd Mosby Go Their Own Way

November 11, 2020
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These superb CDs, from musicians who are doing it their own way, on their own labels, celebrate the realms below and above us: the sea and the sky.

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Book Review: “Death in Her Hands” — There’s No Mystery to This Mystery

October 22, 2020
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It’s as if Moshfegh is testing the furthest limits of a “red herring”: what if everything is red and everything is herring?

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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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Jazz Album Review: Madre Vaca’s “Winterreise”— Varied Jazz Arrangements Bring Schubert in from the Cold

September 8, 2020
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A Mother Cow of jazz iconoclasts takes on German lieder, because why not?

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Jazz Album Review: What “Data Lords” Says About the Remarkable Career of Maria Schneider

August 9, 2020
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“The sun and everything in this world is there waiting for us—patiently and loyally. To feel its power, we just need to make the choice to get up, go out, look up and connect to its magnificence.” That is really, truly, there in the music.

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Arts Reconsideration: “Pinocchio” at 80

July 12, 2020
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Now that the real live boy is an old man, how’s he holding up in 2020?

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Arts Remembrance: Why Jazz Needed Richie Cole

May 4, 2020
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The master alto saxophonist Richie Cole died on May 2 at age 72. The cause of death has not been announced, so it’s unknown for now if it was related to COVID-19.

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Arts Remembrance: The Three Funkiest Handclaps in Music History — An Appreciation of Bill Withers

April 3, 2020
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When I think of Bill Withers I think of just three handclaps. It’s my favorite example in his music, or just about anyone else’s, of the power of restraint — not slamming and flailing about to shift a groove into overdrive.

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Music and Concert Favorites 2019

December 22, 2019
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Our expert music critics serve up their usual highly eclectic round-up of the year’s most memorable.

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