Recent Articles
 

 

VaShawn Mitchell Knows What He Was ‘Created 4’

One of gospel’s “triple threats,” VaShawn Mitchell could barely contain his excitement during a phone interview about his new album, Created 4 This, his fourth long player. Mitchell developed Created 4 This as...
by David McGee
 

 
 

Doubtful Lake

NATURES TEMPLE: One of the great women of 20th Century American letters chronicles her extraordinary hike in 1918 from Doubtful Lake to the Cascade Mountains. From her book Tenting To-Night.
by David McGee
 

 

 

Here Comes the Sun

“As fast as we roll, we’re always catching up/as much as we have, it’ll never be enough/as hard/as hard as we work, we just work our fingers to the bone/what do we have to show?” Listening to this catchy chorus of the f...
by David McGee
 

 
 

Charles Dickens & Music

The latest installment of James T. Lightwood’s 1912 study, Charles Dickens And Music with Chapter VI: Songs and Some Singers. Continuing our year-long bicentennial salute to the great author.
by David McGee
 

 

 

On Saving Mortal Souls

“Having not played in this style in the past is a huge disadvantage, but I am willing to stretch and fight to get it under control. Those pesky chords! Those finger positions, those slides, those finger-thumb rolls, those cou...
by David McGee
 

 
 

Of Lute Duets and East Meets West, From Elizabethan England to Modern Japan

‘…an air of warmth and accessibility…’ Casual pronouncements are made every so often that the lute songs of Elizabethan England were the pop music of their day. The lutenist is said to be the 16th-century version of...
by David McGee
 

 

 

Gerald Scott’s ‘Edgy Sunday Morning’ Testimony in Song

A month before his senior class graduated from high school, Gerald Scott penned a song for the choir to sing at the commencement ceremony. “It was 2003, I was eighteen years old, and I wrote a song called ‘Destiny’ for th...
by David McGee
 

 
 

The Brass Heard ’round the World

Serbia’s Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar Brings Its Dancefloor-Packing Best on Golden Horns Boban Markovic and his son, prized protégé Marko, have managed the nigh-impossible: Leaping from a deeply rooted Roma (Gypsy) s...
by David McGee
 

 

 

‘Mission’ Accomplished

On her vaunted new album, Mission, CECILIA BARTOLI (this is her--really, it is) fashions the music of Agostino Steffani into a conceptual work brimming with passion, politics and intrigue. It is the opera great’s finest hour.
by David McGee
 

 
 

Summit Sessions: B.J. Thomas on Scepter

For those of a certain generation, the radio of their youth never seemed to be long without a new, great B.J. Thomas single. Indeed, between 1966 and 1972 he had 19 charting singles, some way bigger than others, some more regio...
by David McGee