Recent Articles
 

 

Where Grief and Anger Share Space

This new disc from Toccata Classics features chamber music by the young composer Noah Max and exudes, as one critic notes, 'a sense of loss pervading almost everything here.' Yet, it's not a downer.
by David McGee
 

 
 

Always More Love to Be Had

The TWANGTOWN PARAMOURS are back with their third album, DOUBLE DOWN ON A BAD THING, with well-wrought songs, sparkling musicianship, affecting vocals and a deeper exploration of the nuances of relationships. It ain't over 'til...
by David McGee
 

 

 

Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot

With more than one million views at present, this video of CARL SAGAN's eloquent, poetic meditation on 'the only home we've ever known' is even more timely and important than it was when published in 1994. To say it speaks for ...
by David McGee
 

 
 

Updike at Easter, 2022 Edition

Our 11th annual installment of 'Seven Voices on Seven Stanzas' brings together new voices and those of earlier contributors to contemplate the greater meaning of John Updike's provocative poem, 'Seven Stanzas at Easter.'
by David McGee
 

 

 

In Heavy Rotation: Roots & Blues

Rounding up a quartet of must-hear recent releases: NORMAN BLAKE, Day by Day; MARK O'CONNOR, Markology II; MIKE ZITO, Resurrection; and TIFFANY POLLACK, Bayou Liberty.
by David McGee
 

 
 

Monoswezi: Experimentation is The Order of The Day

Shanu quite simply means “Five” in the Shona language of Zimbabwe, home to MONOSWEZI's lead vocalist and mbira player HOPE MASIKE. This, their fifth album, is the most adventurous to date from the lineup representing four n...
by David McGee
 

 

 

The Marovich Gospel Picks

JAVON JACKSON's THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO NIKKI GIOVANNI leads BOB MAROVICH'S new Gospel picks in its new expanded edition now featuring Bob's latest Gospel Singles Picks. Everybody say 'Amen!'
by David McGee
 

 
 

The Hard Road to Compassion and Inclusion in an Alien World

JULES spotlights two important new books for young readers: SANCTUARY: KIP TIERNAN AND ROSIE'S PLACE, THE NATION'S FIRST SHELTER FOR WOMEN and Young Vo's GIBBERISH, in which a young boy navigates a new language in a new land.
by David McGee
 

 

 

Evoking Afternoons in 17th Century Hereford

Composer Matthew Locke was born 400 years ago this year, and to mark this occasion the British viol consort FRETWORK are marking the happy occasion with an album featuring seven of Locke's suites that have hitherto barely made ...
by David McGee
 

 
 

Love Is a Many-Splintered Thing

Herein a dozen smokey, sensuous and often ambivalent discourses on love and passion delivered with the breathy tenderness and sublime understatement of someone defining love not as a many-splendored thing, but rather as a many-...
by David McGee