Category: AJBlogs

Movies, jazz and reading remain my favorite solitary diversions, and Fresh Air critic Kevin Whitehead enables immersion in all three with Play The Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film. – Howard Mandel

After posting my contrarian defense on Tuesday of Gary Garrels, I ducked, anticipating a pile-on of invective. Instead, I got confirmation of what I’ve always known: I’ve got a classy readership — intelligent, civil and reasonable, even while contesting my contentious views. – Lee Rosenbaum

At a moment when culture could vitally contribute to national pride and resilience, the arts are newly challenged financially. The reverberations, internationally, disclose a sudden, naked disparity in the role of long-inherited culture as a component of the national experience in the US compared to attitudes abroad. – Joseph Horowitz

I’m again risking the wrath of the thought-police by coming to the defense of another consummate museum curator who has had the misfortune of wandering into the cancel-culture crosshairs. – Lee Rosenbaum

Though a prominent British reviewer of the current Met production of Porgy and Bess called Gershwin’s 1935 opera “a period piece,” it loudly resounds today. Consider the first act confrontation between a white detective and a black community. – Joseph Horowitz

Sometimes it takes a while to catch up. Case in point: Carla Bley’s, Andy Sheppard’s and Steve Swallow’s Life Goes On. ECM released the album on Valentine’s Day. – Doug Ramsey

As a culturally curious teenager, I had made the 20-minute hike from my Bronx apartment to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, a once popular, now little-known pantheon for bronze busts of great men and women, some by well-known sculptors (including four busts by Daniel Chester French, two by Augustus Saint-Gaudens). – Lee Rosenbaum

The Mellon Foundation’s announcement that its grant-making will focus entirely on social justice is not a wakeup call. The alarm has been sounding for years. Business as usual (that is, we decide what we want to present and ‘they’ should come) is not tenable. – Doug Borwick

Among the at-home dances I’ve seen recently, one strikes me as truly suitable to performers who have to be isolated: Anna Sokolow’s 1955 Rooms, recreated for the pandemic as Rooftop Rooms. – Deborah Jowitt

If we are experts in music, we need to know about now. Imagine a scientist who said: ‘You know I only repeat the experiments of the 19th century. I’ve really worked at them. I get fantastic results.’ But is that science? – Bruce Brubaker