Upon hearing his organ students play some rather daring improvisations before a panel of stuffy adjudicators at the Conservatoire de Paris, the late Romantic French organist and composer Louis Vierne wrote: “Just for appearances I thought I should lecture them a bit on the difference between excess and propriety. But, deep down, I was laughing with them at… continue
For more than a century the Methuen Memorial Music Hall (MMMH) in Methuen, Massachusetts has been making music inside its walls. And inside those walls is something of storied splendor: a world class organ, fondly referred to as “The Great Organ,” that began its trans-Atlantic journey from the Netherlands on New Year’s Day, 1863. It has been… continue
Maybe it has something to do with being from the Isle of Man, an ancient place both of and separate from united empires. Something about those with Manx ancestry, that they possess an ability to light others from within, that they give something innate to others, allowing them to shine in exactly the way they were meant to. Paul McCartney descends from Manx lineage; my… continue
The Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy opened a group of new exhibitions and retrospectives earlier this month. Expanding the Narrative: Recent Acquisitions is comprised of artworks which have never before been displayed for public viewing: rare photo-collages from Beat-generation artist Mary Joan Jay Defeo, oil paintings of Jane Freilicher, and William Wegman’s more recent photographs and panels. In addition, the Addison focuses on self-taught photographer Gordon Parks and a specific set of prints in The New Tide, Early Work (1940-1950). These programs, funded in part by… continue
The dawning of the Fifties birthed the Golden Age of science fiction cinema in America, lasting until…well, has it ever really ended? From the nuclear blast ground zero of giant mutant invasion sci-fi, every subsequent era has had its own impactful wave: the mind-expanding, body-introspective films of the Sixties; the socio-political-environmental Seventies; the Eighties, where the breakneck evolution of special effects sired block bluster-y, world-exploring epics; the… continue