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Posts published by “David Yearsley”

On The Road To Rochester

The glaciers were bigger then. I gained renewed appreciation for their scale two weeks ago when making the long climb by bicycle out of one of the holes they dug as they withdrew northward during…

Bach Blows

For at least as long as people have talked about the weather, they have made music about it—from rain dances to pastoral symphonies, from the Paleolithic to Prince. Never mind that the ongoing destruction—and directly…

Katy Perry’s Gastro-Pop, Gastro-Porn Orgy

Seated on psychedelic Rings of Saturn beneath an arena night sky strewn with planets, stars and galaxies, and herself kitted out in glittering silver wig with matching boots, gown, and guitar, Katy Perry hovered forty…

Jazz Revolutionaries: Monk & Dizzy

Legion are the books on jazz that wave the banner of “revolution” above the chapter devoted to bebop, the improvised American music of swerving light and impossible speed, incandescent optimism and  brooding melancholy that transformed…

Sidelining The Sideman

The one thing you can say about the all-too-familiar genre of posthumous documentary in which dozens of admirers bear dutiful witness to the deceased’s unrecognized artistic achievements, is that at least the departed are spared…

Silent Hamlet

Many have had a go at explaining the madness of Hamlet, not least generations of high school and college students faced with faking their way through that perennial exam essay question: Is the prince’s insanity…

Back In The DDR

Organists have long been present at, indeed participants in, great political events:  the 759 Byzantine delegation from Constantinople to the French court of Pippin the Great, the diplomatic mission that is said to have reintroduced…

Goin’ Down The Road Feeling Blue

It is late August and millions of North Americans and Europeans continue to mass on beaches from Cape Code to the Costa del Sol, the mood of carefree seaside relaxation on the latter shores occasionally…

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