About twenty five years ago during my study years, I had the opportunity to see Alfred Brendel in recital performing Beethoven. I had a vague understanding through recordings what I might hear, but I was not prepared for the possibility that I was going to be involved in a seance.  Among other pieces, Brendel performed […]... Read More

Until the seventeenth century, light was accepted as a force of illumination, colorless and devoid of structure, the essential device by which God brought life from a formless void. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the […]... Read More

The musical world of the 1920’s and 30’s  was taken with the influence of the bold American genre of jazz which seemed to capture the independent, self reliant and mildly undisciplined nature of the new world.  To sophisticates, however, the musical creations of American composers such as Morton and Gershwin were relegates of the music hall, […]... Read More

     By 1874, Modest Mussorgsky was experiencing a decline all too common to the Russian story.  Once considered an icon of Russian musical compositional expression, the dual stresses of age pummeled by an all encompassing allegiance to alcohol (so vividly expressed in the ruborous proboscis highlighted in Repkin’s telling portrait of Mussorgsky) had brought progressive […]... Read More

An eternal sign of the base value of the Christmas tome, the birth of Jesus, and the feelings it emotes, are the varied and universal efforts to reflect it in song and lyric through the ages.  From the direct expressions of the Christian hymnal such as Away, in the Manger to more obtuse, secular expressions, like […]... Read More

The Tommy Dorsey Band was one of the epic forces in American popular music in the 1940’s setting a standard for sophisticated big band sound. Lush arrangements were highlighted by band singers that would accentuate the interaction between voice and instrument creating an American Sound that would dominate the era. Most famous of the singers […]... Read More