Sunday, August 11, 2019

What We Did on Our Holidays - Part 1

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I've been on a Fairport Convention kick lately, so I decided to purloin the title of their second album for two pieces on what Marth...
Saturday, July 20, 2019

I remember where I was ...

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... when Neil Armstrong took "one small step... ." At 10:30 P.M. EDT on July 20, 1969 I was at Indiantown Gap Military Reserva...
Sunday, July 07, 2019

Remembering Sandy Denny

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Alexandra Elene MacLean Denny, known to the world of devotees of British folk and folk rock, of which I'm part, as Sandy Denny, died o...
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Monday, May 27, 2019

Farewell, Bill Buckner, who made my day in 1986.

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In October of 1986 I was at home watching my Mets play the Red Sox in game six of the World Series. The Sox led the series 3-2, and this g...
Monday, May 13, 2019

Farewell, first crush!

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Well, first celebrity crush. Sometime in my earlier, polymorphously perverse years, there was a redhead named Irene from whom I, in my fir...
Thursday, March 28, 2019

Mets win opener. Is this a bad sign?

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It's not an entirely facetious question. My wife, a Red Sox fan, is convinced that the better her team does early, the worse their sea...
Monday, January 21, 2019

"The Drum Major Instinct"

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Two months before he was murdered, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached a sermon on "The Drum Major Instinct." He began with th...
Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Repast Baroque Ensemble's "Them Foreigners": musical multiculturalism in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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This concert was on October 18, but the demands of remunerative work and of keeping the Brooklyn Heights Blog going have delayed my revie...
Sunday, October 28, 2018

Tree of Life: a massacre of the aged.

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When I saw that the names of those who died in yesterday's mass murder at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh had been published,...
Wednesday, October 03, 2018

Richard Nelson's Uncle Vanya, at Hunter College, with Jay O. Sanders.

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I saw this play, a new adaptation of Anton Chekhov's classic, in previews several weeks ago, and meant to post about it, because it i...
Friday, August 31, 2018

Happy 73rd, Van Morrison!

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It's late, and given the time difference between here and Ireland (if that's where he's been celebrating his birthday) this ma...
Monday, August 27, 2018

Leonard Bernstein's Wonderful Town

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Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was the greatest American composer, conductor, and musician of the second half of the twentieth century. Th...
Sunday, August 26, 2018

Mets make it above the Times fold, twice!

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For years I've been annoyed (not paranoid, but real annoyed, to quote the late Mickey Fletcher) by the Gray Lady's sports scribes...
Friday, August 24, 2018

Aretha Franklin: a belated tribute.

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I meant to post something a week ago, but a trip to hospital - fortunately successful - intervened. Although her recording career began ye...
Monday, August 06, 2018

Dogs on boats.

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Last summer I took lots of photos on a short vacation that took us to New Hampshire and Cape Cod. I had meant to post photos from that tri...
Sunday, July 08, 2018

Bertrand Russell on growing old.

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Bertrand Russell was one of the pre-eminent philosophers of the past century. Although much of his work was devoted to analytical philoso...
Sunday, June 10, 2018

Repast Baroque Ensemble's "Bohemian Fantasy" features works by Biber, Schmelzer, Buxtehude, Finger, and Purcell.

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Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber was a true Bohemian; that is, he was born and raised in Bohemia, then a German speaking enclave in what i...
Monday, May 28, 2018

Celebrating an oil tanker's 80th birthday.

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Oil tankers don't, as a rule, survive for eighty years. The giants that haul crude from oil fields to refineries are reckoned to have ...
Friday, March 30, 2018

Mets win opener; lose an icon.

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The Mets won their season opener, at home, today, beating the Cardinals 9-4 . I was at work while they were playing, so all I know is the ...
Saturday, March 24, 2018

Repast Baroque Ensemble's "Dresden Fireworks" illuminated little known works and often overlooked instruments.

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Some wag -- probably a frustrated clarinet or English horn player -- once defined the oboe as "an ill wind that nobody blows good....
Saturday, March 17, 2018

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, "Finnegan's Wake"

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James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake , reckoned one of the most difficult books to read, took its title and a tiny bit of its narrtive fr...
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Monday, March 05, 2018

Roger Bannister, 1929-2018.

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On May 6, 1954 I was eight years and not quite two months old. My parents and I were preparing for a European vacation before returning to...
Wednesday, January 24, 2018

The Bench, Robert Galinsky's searing play about homelessness, directed by Jay O. Sanders

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How could I pass up a play that had as its author and sole performer, and as its director, men I had known since our children had all been...
Monday, January 15, 2018

Mavis Staples, "We Shall Not Be Moved."

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In the clip below, Mavis Staples sings a song that's perhaps more timely now than since the years leading up to the passage of the Civi...
Tuesday, January 09, 2018

2017: remembrances.

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2017 was a year of many losses. The Grace Church community suffered the loss of several long standing members. Ann Gaffney was an artist...
Sunday, December 24, 2017

Boston Camerata, Joel Cohen conducting, "Jesus, the Light of the World."

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According to Joel Cohen's notes accompanying the Erato CD, the source of this delightful song is " The Finest of the Wheat: Hymns...