CRITICS PICKS
CLASSICAL Piano-palooza: The International Keyboard Institute and Festival offers dozens of pianists and, equally important, a vast amount of piano repertoire. Piano lovers can indulge for two full...
View ArticleShine On You Hopeful Pop Star
Bright Light Bright Light’s Rod Thomas answers our questions and plays NYC Gigs London-based musician Rod Thomas makes pop music under the name Bright Light Bright Light, which is, of course, the...
View ArticleSetting the Standards
Where are the new jazz classics? Heard any new jazz songs or symphonettes? Is there a hot jazz lick or tune everyone’s digging this summer? A riff or rhythm musicians are tossing around like a great...
View ArticleSketches of Newport
Our Man in Newport, No Jive The late composer-arranger Gil Evans’ music finally, gloriously, reached the Newport Jazz Festival, 58 years after the fest began. Drummer Jack DeJohnette celebrated his...
View ArticleFree Bird
Charlie Parker Jazz Festival takes flight over Manhattan Manhattan’s own Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, produced by the City Parks Foundation, celebrates its 20th anniversary with free concerts in...
View ArticleEverything Means Something
Pet Shop Boys find Elysium on new CD With an ear bent toward eternity, British pop-duo Pet Shop Boys and L.A. producer Andrew Dawson find the sublime sound (minimalist yet California-warm) befitting...
View ArticleBeatles Fan Fare
Photographers Whitaker and Gunther capture Beatles history Most people reading this could look at any given photo of The Beatles from Please Please Me onwards and accurately guess the year it was...
View ArticleDeMent Goes Home
Iris DeMent Sings the Delta During the last decade, Iris DeMent’s New York concerts featured an expanding repertoire of new folk songs uncannily attuned to the needs of the audience. This fall, she...
View ArticleThe Gypsy in Streisand’s Head
Brooklyn Homecoming could Solve Barbra’s Career Problems Barbra Streisand is set to return to her native Brooklyn on October 11 at the Barclays Center, where she will perform for the first time in her...
View ArticleGet Happy!!
Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain brings Twang to Carnegie Hall An elegant audience pays rapt tribute to the seven musicians on Carnegie Hall’s Perelman Stage as the final chord crescendos to its...
View ArticleDesire and the Tracks
Ten Best Albums of 2012 1. Sing the Delta, Iris DeMent – In the harrowing closing track, “Out of the Fire,” DeMent perfectly expresses the need for the pop catharsis and the deeper—salvific—yearning...
View ArticleThe Year in Pop Music
Kendrick Lamar’s music to live by sums up 2012 pop music If you go by radio or Internet singles, then the great pop songs of 2012 were “We Are Young” by Fun and “Swimming Pools” by Kendrick Lamar—two...
View ArticleTop Ten EPs of 2012
The Best in Order of Preference 1. “Late,” Florrie 2. “Super Ultra,” Charli XCX 3. “Cold Summer,” CJ Hilton 4. “Warrior,” Queen of Hearts 5. “Skitszo Pt. 1,” Colette Carr 6. “Iconic,” Icona Pop 7....
View ArticleOn the Blues Train
Glenn Ligon brings jazz to the Whitney It must have been incredibly daunting to put together the thought-provoking exhibit, “Blues for Smoke,” at the Whitney Museum, which runs through April 28. The...
View ArticleSojourner Snoop
A hip-hop icon’s chronicle of reincarnated rap culture Rapper Snoop Dogg’s not the first African-American musician to be smitten by reggae culture. For the most part, though, Black American traditions,...
View ArticleKnee Deep in 20/20 Experiences
Timberlake defines himself and today’s pop Justin Timberlake’s enduring commercial, critical, and street-level success can perhaps best be explained with an insight from Sigmund Freud: There is no...
View ArticleMagnetic Musicianship
Terence Blanchard brings jazz to opera Terence Blanchard takes big risks. Ever since his early years with drummer Art Blakey’s legendary Jazz Messengers, the 51-year -old trumpeter has stepped out to...
View ArticleMusic of the Heavens
Musica Mundana’s transcendent New York performance Mundana is the worst kind of false cognate: it pretends to mean its opposite. Musica mundana is not, as one would expect, mundane music at all but...
View ArticleSharecropping Sirens
A radiant documentary honors the background singer In Greil Marcus’ original review of the Rolling Stones’ 1969 “Gimme Shelter,” he wrote about “women who can shout like Mary [sic] Clayton–gutty,...
View ArticleResurrection Rock
Punk pioneers discovered in Motown With Detroit being the epicenter of music during the 1960’s and ‘70s one wonders how many unsung music phenoms will eventually be discovered. This year we saw an...
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