Seen today, Jazz on a Summer’s Day shimmers with its glimpses of a world in which people, for all their differences, shared so much. When was the last time so many people got together with such geniality and grace? Continue Reading »
Though I would not dare deviate from Bach’s Passions for Good Friday music listening, I cannot think of a more appropriate recording than Honeck’s “Larghetto for Orchestra” for Holy Saturday. Continue Reading »
In the Missa Solemnis, Beethoven’s titanic subjectivity seems chastened by suffering and transformed by his engagement with the graced objectivity of liturgical text and tradition. Continue Reading »
As his latest album demonstrates, a subset of Sting’s songs reverberates with the legacy of an urban English Catholic childhood of the 1950s and ’60s. Continue Reading »
In this season of charity, perhaps we can reconsider the unjustly maligned reputation of Fritz, the troublemaker child in the Nutcracker ballet. Continue Reading »
The etymology of the word “carol” is linked back to dances of joy and praise. The birth of humanity’s savior seems pretty clearly to warrant both. Continue Reading »
The piano is the instrument of expressive individualism; the harpsichord is the instrument of a vibrant, discursive life of the mind. Continue Reading »