Covid claimed the jazz legend Barry Harris last week. The pianist died in a hospital across the Hudson River from Manhattan in North Bergen, New…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
Jane Campion’s Power of the Dog, now out on NetFlix, recognizes no borders. It’s a Western that crosses the frontiers of geography, genre, and gender…
One of the most famous trees in music is the one hymned by the title character in the opening scene of Handel’s 1738 opera Xerxes.…
As the flag-waving scenes of this election week recede in the rearview mirror of the campaign bus, the numbers of the discontent increase in the…
Less than a month before the first presidential election of December 1788, Francis Hopkinson published his Seven Songs for the Harpsichord or Forte Piano, dedicating the set…
He had oil in his beard and defiance in his eye. Both gleamed in the October sunshine streaming through the windows at the back of…
The playlist of life follows patterns, tends to the familiar. We don’t need Silicon Valley algorithm makers to seduce us into routines. We fall into…
One has come to accept, even perversely enjoy, the full foolish fury of America’s National Anthem as patriotic prelude to the country’s most brutal sports.…
For some thirty years now your Musical Patriot has marched in step with a woman named Annette to countless nights in the cinema, opera, and…
An early August road trip heading east from the city of Ithaca across New York State promises calm, pastoral progress. With farming in steep decline…
Among the most alluring of cross-species collaborations is truffle hunting, a pursuit that brings dog—or, more rarely these days, pig—together with man. Women, it seems,…