Articles
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Page 415
Paul Hendrickson's Hemingway
The old man and the boat: Hemingway, Cuba and me
Paul Hendrickson has pursued Hemingway the way I once pursued e.e. commings. The lesson: Don't be shy. If someone has written a poem or a book that means a lot to you, reach out.
Articles
6 minute read
KÓ¹lÓº Mèlé's "Sacred Journeys' at the Painted
African roots: The real deal
KÓ¹lÓº Mèlé is no mere group of well-meaning ethnics performing to amuse themselves and their audience; it invites us into the infectious beauty, mystery and glamour of the true African aesthetic— which is a long way from tap dancing and shuffling.
Articles
3 minute read
Clint Eastwood's "J. Edgar'
Edgar and Clyde: An unlikely love story
Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar Hoover is less the fearsome FBI director who created the template for the modern security state than a closet homosexual whose prurience about others' private lives masked his concealment of his own— above all from himself.
Articles
8 minute read
How to save the Philadelphia Orchestra
To save the Orchestra, learn from General Motors
Just how many classical music lovers live in the Delaware Valley? Enough to make a difference for the survival of the genre, not to mention the Philadelphia Orchestra? Equally important, are the necessary tools available? I would answer yes on both counts— if only the Orchestra's bean counters would get out of the way.
Articles
5 minute read
Hazing scandal at Florida A & M's band
A great college band, if its musicians survive
Florida A & M is justly proud of its Marching 100 band, a famous innovator in band choreography. But a litany of hazing abuses suggests that here's another case of a campus organization that's become bigger than its school.
Articles
4 minute read
Philip Glass's 'Satyagraha' at the Met
Gandhi's humble philosophy (for $345 a ticket)
Mohandas Gandhi understood how to mobilize the oppressed masses against the elites of his day. Philip Glass's Satyagraha, for all its ethereal music and purported veneration of Gandhi, seems designed to alienate the masses while deliberately appealing to an elite niche audience.
Articles
5 minute read
Gardiner and Jurowski: Two period pieces (2nd review)
Authentic period pieces? Ain't no such thing
Sir John Eliot Gardiner led his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in an all-Beethoven program on period instruments, followed two days later by Vladimir Jurowski's magisterial reading of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony. That performance, too, had a period feel, but for quite different reasons.
Articles
8 minute read
"Maroons' by Iron Age Theatre
When football players wore leather helmets
The Pottsville Maroons joined the National Football League in 1926 and achieved the best won-lost record for that season but were stripped of the league championship on a technicality. Playwright Ray Saraceni has turned that technicality into a dramatic climax, aided by a cast of players who seem more like real coal miners than thespians.
Articles
4 minute read
Chunky Move's "Connected' at Annenberg
Is it movement, or just twitching?
A collaboration between a choreographer and a sculptor sounds exciting in theory. In practice, it raises more questions than it answers about the nature of artistic connections.
Articles
3 minute read
"Blood and Gifts': Afghanistan's tragedy at Lincoln Center
More than you ever wanted to know about Afghanistan
J.T. Rogers wants to teach us how the U.S. got bogged down in Afghanistan. His heart's in the right place, and if you stick with Blood and Gifts to the end, your patience will be rewarded. But it's a struggle.
Articles
5 minute read