If I ever see another Shakespeare production where somebody drives a Jeep on stage, I’m going to run screaming up the aisle.
I think that most of the best movies made in America in the 20th century were crime dramas, screwball comedies and westerns.
I believe deeply that jazz is still a very vital music that has much to say, not just to eggheads, or whatever the musical equivalent of an egghead is, but to ordinary people.
Ai Weiwei, who is both a widely admired conceptual artist and a fearless human-rights activist, has been on the bad side of the Chinese government for years.
Maine likes to call itself ‘America’s Vacationland.’ For many artists, though, it’s the office. Since the 19th century, painters from all over the country – including Edward Hopper, Alex Katz, John Marin, Fairfield Porter, Neil Welliver and Andrew Wyeth – have spent large chunks of time there.
It’s certainly no secret that American students are taught less and less about the canonical literary masterpieces of the past, and there is no shortage of people who believe that what little they’re required to learn in school is still too much.
No translation can possibly be perfect. Every production and every performance is a different path up the mountain, and nobody ever makes it all the way to the summit.
One reason why Shakespeare’s plays remain so popular is that they’re now regularly presented in updated stagings with a contemporary flavor.
There is still a lot to be said for the well-made, witty, clever, three-act comedy.
The ‘Podunk Times’ is not going to have a good dance critic, I absolutely promise you that. There’s just not enough dance there.
Needless to say, anybody who can stumble through a C-major scale knows that Art Tatum always gave his audiences 10 times their money’s worth.
I am, as it happens, a baby boomer, but not one who feels any broad-gauge nostalgia for the ’60s and ’70s. My attitude resembles that of my parents, who were born in the ’20s and lived through the Great Depression and World War II.
Well into the ’40s, it wasn’t uncommon for big-budget Hollywood movies to contain little or no underscoring, and many of today’s directors, following the lead of Martin Scorsese in ‘GoodFellas,’ accompany their films with pop records, not original music.
Copland was one of the first American composers to forge a truly modern style of American classical music while also making use of American popular music – including jazz.
What’s the funniest play ever written? I used to think it was ‘Noises Off,’ but now that I’ve seen ‘The Liar,’ I’m not so sure.
Not only are most of our citizens fathomlessly ignorant of the glories of American literature, a fast-growing percentage of our students are no longer taught much about any works of American art, be they novels, paintings, symphonies or ballets.
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