Is Frivolity Always Frivolous?
After the most gruesome, tough assignments...I went shopping.
Arts & Letters
Need a Little Sprezzatura….
I came upon a word the other day, and when I learned its definition, my whole being ached. What I was reading had been written long ago. Was this word even possible anymore? In a studied sense, of course. But as I wanted it to mean?
The word…
Miniature Compositions at an Exhibition
The Unheard-of Ensemble has been taking this collaborative show on the road every summer, from city to city, from year to year, but they had so much fun in St. Louis, were so heartily welcomed by our creative community, and so ably hosted by Stark and Washington University’s Department of Music that they might be back—maybe even to stay. Let us hope so.
How Women, Men, and Barack Obama See Colors
When I read an art critic’s cavalier description of the colored tiles in Spencer Finch’s Memory Landscape as “backsplash,” I winced for him. The work is so much more than that. Even the concept is lovely: fill seventy feet of one of the walls at the Obama Presidential Center…
New Music for the End Time
The Collaborative Composition Initiative concluded its week in St. Louis with two sets of premieres: nine new pieces performed by the Unheard-of Ensemble at Dissonant Works on South Jefferson Friday night and nine miniatures inspired by works at the Kemper Art Museum performed by
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Brooklyn Band Starts Classical Music Season Early with Collaborative Composition Initiative
This classical music off-season, St. Louis is hosting something of a classical music talent combine for new composers and the creative musicians who perform their work. Let us call the Collaborative Composition Initiative a summery Spring Training for the classical music season to come.
James Merrill: The Poetics of Place
One can, of course, judge a work of art on its own terms, carefully setting aside the life of its creator, with its cascading influences of love, pain, or situation. But for me, there is something rich and compelling about imagining what WashU Libraries just showed us: “James…
The Making of a Black Role Model
I am the same age as Jayne Kennedy, and her memoir does a wonderful job of recreating how exciting a time it was if—to paraphrase singer and pianist Nina Simone—one were young, ambitious, and Black.
Something I Learned from You: Poise is Too Often Like Pose
I laughed and told my son that the singer reminded me of myself in high school—gawky, skinny, comic not handsome, watching everyone else but doing your own thing a little too enthusiastically.
Winning and Losing at the Great Game of Intimacy
What to call this Anton Chekhov, whom I first encountered in 1988? The Master, perhaps—of vision, decency, modesty, and industry, and, one might hope, in the old game of love.