recent posts
- Audra McDonald and “Original Nepo Baby” Gwyneth Paltrow: Honorees at the NYWFT Muse Awards 23 March 2026
- Zach Bryan Buys the On the Road Scroll/ Happy Birthday, Jack Kerouac!
- William S. Burroughs/ Nova ’78 at MoMA/ Remembering James Grauerholz
- Jacob Elordi in Wuthering Heights: Monster Mash
- Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent: A Cool Brazilian Gets an Oscar Nod
Category: Music
-
Among the many ways the pioneering comedienne Moms Mabley was a pioneer was that she performed at the Apollo in 1939, five years after the Harlem theater opened. In her signature hats, mismatched housedresses, and gummy lips, she was a hoot, although her jokes consisted mostly in telling the truth. Her deadpan was killer. She…
-
Puffing vigorously on a cigarette substitute, Art Spiegelman addressed journalists at the Jewish Museum at a recent opening of an exhibition “Co-mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics and Scraps.” Referring to his most potent inspiration for subversive art, “Mad Magazine,” he jokes, he’s convinced, the Viet Nam War protests would not have happened had it…
-
Rock icon and beat poet, Lou Reed had an edgy downtown presence. My Lou Reed stories: so engrossed in his music, head stuck to the ground under a table at the Bottom Line to get a better shot. I swear never to become a photographer. At St. Mark’s Church: Lou Reed and Allen Ginsberg mix…
-
The name Alabama has such beautiful assonance, its flow of “a” makes its own Southern comfort! So the sound of “Sweet Home Alabama,” one song in a stellar soundtrack for the documentary, Muscle Shoals, is proverbial music to the ears, an anthem to the Southern rock that flourished in this idyllic spot. A mecca for…
-
Kevin Spacey still talks about the excitement of meeting Jack Lemmon when he was 13, and hearing him say, “You were a touch of terrific.” Now introducing 134 young musicians from 50 countries, at Lincoln Center this week, he recounted that story as a way of explaining the importance of encouraging young talent. The World…
-
On a field of lights, on a stage bare except for a podium, a big chair, and a neon rectangle that could have been a James Turrell design, Laurie Anderson performed violin, made vocal sound, and mused on many topics at Guild Hall Saturday night. What if we renamed the planet Dirt, she challenged: “Then we could…
-
Running up to the Tony Awards, Cyndi Lauper was busy with events celebrating the CD release of the Kinky Boots original cast recording, and a tour that would start the day after the Tony’s. On Wednesday evening, just after a photo shoot for Vogue, Lauper signed her caricature at Sardi’s. It was hard to say what she,…
-
It’s always Howdy Doody time in music producer Hal Willner’s workspace at the Film Center building in Manhattan. Best known for producing music for Saturday Night Live, Willner shares his lair with many antique puppets, Jackie Gleason memorabilia including a Ralph Cramden bus driver’s suit, as well as DVD’s of Shoah and other Holocaust films. He jokes,…
-
Fresh from D. C., from a concert at the White House, Sam Moore performed his “Hold On, I’m Coming,” “Something is Wrong with My Baby,” “Soul Man” revue at the We Are Family Foundation Benefit on Thursday night, a tribute to Sting and Trudie Styler for their humanitarian efforts. An impassioned Slater Jewell-Kemker (20) and…
-
Fresh from Kennedy Center Honors, the actor Dustin Hoffman was promoting his new movie, Quartet, his directorial debut. At a Q&A following a screening last week, the Academy Award winning actor noted the relationship between acting and directing. When he was starting out, he wanted to direct. He had a dream: You could be the…
-
Audrey Flack and the History of Art String Band offers a crash course in such giant art figures as Caravaggio, Camille Claudel, Lee Krasner, Van Gogh, Picasso, Mary Cassat, and Jackson Pollock. “Oh, oh, action Jackson,” sings Flack, an early photorealist painter, sculptor of goddesses, and resident of East Hampton, strumming her banjo and accompanied…
-
A fine new musical had its world premiere at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater last night, Big Maybelle: Soul of the Blues at Bay Street, based on Maybelle Smith, a blues singer from the early 20th century, who once opened for Billie Holliday and toured America in the perilous segregation era, plagued by diabetes, an unhealthy girth,…
-
The Big Bang may have been the theme of this year’s Watermill Center extravaganza of a summer gala, with its outsized red phalluses, neon ninjas, and popping balloons, but many East End events make big noise. At the Watermill Center on Saturday night, even a heavy downpour did not deter a dancer clad in wedding…
