Category: AJBlogs

“All I managed to say was: ‘It’s over.’ … There will never again be a Fidelio like this.” – Joe Horowitz

Bob Sheppard, The Fine Line (Challenge)
The veteran saxophonist/flutist’s career as a collaborator and L.A. film and TV musicians may account for his not having achieved greater fan recognition. This album could change that. – Doug Ramsey

The arts being valued by the government as an important part of society and the (near) certainty that money will be available for basic operations — as in Australia and Chile, which I recently visited — borders on utopian fantasy for those of us in the States. And yet there are reasons they envy us. – Doug Borwick

Ronald K. Brown’s Grace and Mercy, performed by Ronald K. Brown/Evidence: A Dance Company at the 2019 SummerScape Festival at Bard College. – Deborah Jowitt

My DownBeat article about the compulsively listenable Last Poets album Transcending Toxic Times includes a lot of quotes from bassist/composer Jamaaladeen Tacuma and poet Abiudon Oyewale. But there’s more to tell. – Howard Mandel

Posset was a drink that, in the 16th century, solidified, a sheer nightmare with emollient richness I can only say is a spoonful of lacks — texture, diversity, surprise. On its face, raw tofu comes close — until you cut, taste, wake up. – Jeff Weinstein

“We seem to be fighting similar battles,” wrote a CultureGrrl reader in response to my appreciation, posted Monday, of the critic/scholar, 74, whose pioneering work defined what became known as “The Pictures Generation.” – Lee Rosenbaum

Compagnie CNDC-Angers/Robert Swinston dances Merce at Jacob’s Pillow – Deborah Jowitt

Here are some excerpts from a brief but illuminating chat I had ten years ago with Douglas Crimp, the influential critic, curator and art historian who died Friday at the age of 74. – Lee Rosenbaum

Everybody from singers to directors to conductors to critics has needed a few decades to determine what exactly is in John Adams’s first opera and how to draw the most out of it. Steven LaCosse’s staging at this year’s Princeton Festival did just that. – David Patrick Stearns