The story goes that if the legendary composer and orchestrator Duke Ellington had met you and gotten his hands on your mailing address, you could expect a Christmas card from him. It may not come at Christmas but at some point during the year, his personally written and signed greetings Read more…
Well, Happy Birthday to James Paul McCartney, who was born this day in 1942 and grew up to be one half of what became arguably the greatest songwriting partnership in popular music. What a gift he had, to seemingly exhale melodies. What a remarkable, innovative bass player, to boot. What Read more…
It all started very innocently. Vulture published a list ranking all of the songs recorded and released by the Beatles in ascending order, and while I’d never been a Beatle maniac, I was enough of a fan to be interested; it was fun to look back, particularly on the earlier Read more…
My latest piece over at Word on Fire concerns this weeks Met Gala, which opened the Metropolitan Museum’s latest exhibit, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” an exhibit I hope to visit next week and wrote more about. The gala, though, certainly got a lot of attention. It always Read more…
It was St. Teresa of Avila who said, “If in all things you seek Jesus, doubtless you will find him.” After reading this piece about the #metoo-inspired hand-wringing accompanying the revivals or debuts of musical theater productions, it occurred to me that if in all things one seeks sexism, oppression Read more…