Welcome to … Where Are We?
Danish Dance Theatre comes to the Joyce Theater, October 13-16.
Help! I’ve been sucked into a nightmarish world known only to people who’ve seen too much dance. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-10-17
Inspiring talk
The talks at the important — and inspiring — DePauw School of Music Symposium — have started to stream.I gave the keynote, but that’s not as important to me as what others said. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-10-17
Monday Recommendation: Sanders & Strosahl
Nick Sanders & Logan Strosahl, Janus (Sunnyside)
Collaborators since their student days at the New England Conservatory nearly a decade ago, pianist Sanders and saxophonist Strosahl are dedicated to tradition and improvisation. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-10-17
A Sanders-Strosahl Followup
Nick Sanders and Logan Strosahl, now and then put up a video on their YouTube channel. Their recent album is the new Rifftides Monday Recommendation (see the previous post). Here is a standard song … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-10-17
Silent Bond
Unspoken romantic feelings. The absent, or undemonstrative, parent. Kitchen table tales of a like-minded ancestor. All of us have had deep connections to other human beings that are never expressed, yet hold a powerful influence over our thoughts and actions. … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2016-10-17
A good day’s work
I started writing newspaper and magazine profiles, mostly of musicians, some thirty-odd years ago. I only gave it up when my duties as a peripatetic drama critic grew too demanding. It wouldn’t be quite right to say that I regret having done so … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-10-17
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Something New: An Arts Super-PAC Aims To Put The Arts In Politics
Usually funded by private investors or large corporations, an artist-run super PAC is a completely new concept, though the driving force behind it is not. “We believe that artists, and art, play an important role in galvanizing our society to do better,” says For Freedoms on its website. “We are frustrated with a system in which money, divisiveness, and a general lack of truth-telling have stifled complex conversation.
What Would Shakespeare Make Of All These Novelists Reimagining His Plays?
Adam Gopnik, reviewing several titles in the Hogarth Shakespeare Project: “We are supposed to say that he would be pleased, but in truth he would be puzzled. … The low-key, chastened, anti-dramatic movement of Anne Tyler’s imagination – no marvels or events, really, just inner action rebounding off half-spoken idea – would have baffled him. This sells? He was used to getting half of London on their asses for a play, and he knew you needed bloody scenes and children baked in pies to do it.”
The Twilight Of Leonard Cohen
“As I approach the end of my life,” says the songwriter/poet/mystic, “I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one’s life or one’s work. I was never given to it when I was healthy, and I am less given to it now.” But David Remnick, somehow, manages to get him to do it.
‘Laughter Is Possible Laughter Is Possible’ – The Talent And Torment Of Shirley Jackson
“Here’s how not to be taken seriously as a woman writer: Use demons and ghosts and other gothic paraphernalia in your fiction. Describe yourself publicly as ‘a practicing amateur witch’ and boast about the hexes you have placed on prominent publishers. Contribute comic essays to women’s magazines about your hectic life as a housewife and mother.”