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Posts published by “David Yearsley”

Favorite Things: Greta, Ariana, Coltrane & The Von Trapps

Greta Thunberg’s four-minute jeremiad at the United Nations this past Monday was delivered not standing behind a pulpit or kneeling on rocky ground. With perfect posture she perched at the front of a bright white…

Head of State

The body politic has human parts: head, limbs, heart. That body has an abundance of these in the case of the royal giant that brandishes sword and scepter on the frontispiece of Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes. This…

Big in the Bungalow of Believers

Free tickets from a friend sent my companion and me to a production of the musical Big staged by the Berkeley Repertory Theatre on a sunny Sunday afternoon in July. My companion grew up in…

Songs of State

Other than the basic press blurbs, I could find no detailed reports of the music performed at the recent state banquet held in the Buckingham Palace ballroom. The largest space in the palace, the ballroom…

The Sound of Skyscrapers

The attacks of September 11, 2001 reinstated for more than a decade the Empire State Building as the highest structure in New York City, a distinction it had held from its completion in 1931 until…

Burney in Berkeley

By November of 1770 the English organist, traveler, and man of letters, Charles Burney had been on the road for five months, touring the Continent doing research for his General History of Music; the first of…

Disaster Music

As historic Midwestern floodwaters receded, another “bomb cyclone” attacked the central U.S. this week. It is a time of extremes: to the south wildfire danger builds in New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. So much for…

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