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Contemporary a cappella is having ‘a moment’. From the widespread coverage of such pop culture phenomena as Glee and the Pitch Perfect franchise to increased televised screenings of national a cappella competitions and reality competition shows such as The Sing Off in the USA and The Choir in the UK, there is no denying the [...]
Massachusetts native Aoife O’Donovan surely ranks among the most talented musicians in the indie folk genre of her generation. Most immediately compelling is her vocal timbre, impossibly combining lightheartedness with profound gravity, youthful exuberance with timeless wisdom, wispy etherealnes with husky earthiness. Just as her voice embraces seemingly irreconcilable opposites, so too does her music [...]
Many Americans feared for the future of the infant nation during the election of 1800. The third presidential election was also the first truly contested election and many individuals saw the party divisions that rent the nation as a sign not just of national discord but of national disunion. Ministers used their pulpits to expound [...]
Mister Rogers was a revolutionary. Yes... that Mister Rogers -- the kindly gentleman, with the red cardigan sweater, tennis shoes, and puppet friends who welcomed generations of children to his neighborhood every weekday morning from 1968 to 2001. The same Fred Rogers who sang “…won’t you be my neighbor” and introduced us to the Neighborhood [...]
Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, famously tried to kill his detective off when he got tired of writing the stories. But the public demanded Sherlock back, and Conan Doyle needed the money so that he could write the historical fiction he found more important. So it turns out Sherlock didn’t die in [...]
It’s a mystery – even a frustration – that I see and hear every time an all-men’s vocal or choral group performs, especially in a setting or performance when an all-women’s group has also sung. The female group gets applause, from polite to enthusiastic, often but not always related to the excellence of the [...]
On June 27, 1971, when the legendary Bill Graham introduced The Allman Brothers Band at the very last show at the Fillmore East, he said, “...for my amateur ears, in all my life, I’ve never heard the kind of music that this band plays: the finest contemporary music. We’re going to round it off with [...]
The temptation is great to think of the music of Mozart, Mendelssohn, Torroba and Rodrigo as a substance or thing present-at-hand. “Music” is a common noun in our language, after all. Nouns name things. Music answers the question “What?” What is music? In the skillful and loving hands of world conductor Philippe Entremont, the Munich [...]
In 2006, soon after the group on the Centre alumni trip to Ireland landed at Shannon airport in the West of the country, they checked into the historic, ivy-covered Old Ground Hotel in Ennis, County Clare. The hotel’s pub is named "The Poet’s Corner”—the name a kind of Irish joke: "Sorry, honey, I won't be home 'til late; I'm [...]
In November of last year, Billy Gibbons, guitarist and frontman for ZZ Top, played in Washington D.C. at a Congressional ceremony honoring former Czech President, Vaclav Havel. Gibbons wasn’t exactly sure why he had been invited to play. But like a gentleman, he accepted. Gibbons, of course, is a seasoned entertainer and generally seemed to [...]
