Baby, It’s Hot in Here!

A vintage pick from 2009: The HOT CLUB OF SAN FRANCISCO in various configurations performing unique and often witty transformations of Yule classics.
by David McGee
 

 
 

‘You’ll Go Down In History’—And How

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen… But do you know the real-life tragedy that spurred Robert May to write a poem for his four-year-old daughter that became a cultural and multimedia phenomenon? Rudolph takes fl...
by David McGee
 

 

 

The King Keeps Christmas Well

ELVIS made the most of the two Christmas albums he recorded in his lifetime, and RCA has made the most out of multitudinous repackagings.
by David McGee
 

 
 

Softly, As She Leaves Us

Style and Substance: Remembering EYDIE GORME + a potpourri of her essential recordings
by David McGee
 

 

 

Countdown to Pluto

NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft has traversed the orbit of Neptune. This is its last major crossing en route to becoming the first probe to make a close encounter with distant Pluto on July 14, 2015.
by David McGee
 

 
 

Last Chants

Hardcore drummer/photographer JASON HAMACHER discusses a journey that took him on a years-long quest to find and record some of the world’s oldest yet least known liturgical music, in a country that eventually devolved into c...
by David McGee
 

 

 

To Seek a Better World

On its new album, U.K. collective DON KIPPER offers music taut with intention to meet the moment.
by David McGee
 

 
 

Catherine (of Aragon) and Henry (VIII) Dancing? Imagine!

The ROSE CONSORT OF VIOLS, with mezzo-soprano CLARE WILKINSON, are dazzling on a new disc of music drawn from some of the earliest manuscripts surviving from the turn of the 16th Century.
by David McGee
 

 

 

Being About an Instrument ‘At Once Familiar and Unknown’

In ART OF THE MANDOLIN, AVI AVITAL offers a perspective on 300 years of music composed specifically for his instrument of choice. A range of perspectives--via reviews, interviews and first-person observations-help explain the a...
by David McGee
 

 
 

Spring in Verse

Spring cannot arrive too soon, and we anticipate its arrival in verse from SHAKESPEARE, EMILY DICKINSON, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH and other, and in song from MARK O'CONNOR, VIVALDI et al.
by David McGee
 

 

 

Elbert Hubbard’s Mozart

ELBERT HUBBARD--writer, publisher,artist and philosopher--was about as interesting a character as the famous people he wrote about. His 1901 prose portrait of MOZART is unlike any other account of the great composer's life and ...
by David McGee
 

 
 

A Spotlight on Smaller Publishers

Reviews of three new beautifully illustrated picture books for children, all issued by smaller publishing houses
by David McGee