The creativity and craft of George Martin, the celebrated Beatles producer who died this week at the age of 90, is to be heard nowhere more radically and radiantly than on the band’s 1967 single,…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
I first met the celebrated American composer Steven Stucky not in Ithaca, where we have both lived for the past twenty years, but in Los Angeles on February 26, 1995. I arrived in Ithaca later that year; Steve had taken up what proved to be a more than three-decade-long post as professor of music at Cornell back in 1980 after doing his doctorate in composition at the university in the 1970s.
When the Super Bowl turned fifty in Silicon Valley last Sunday the nation and the world yearned for a display of the latest developments cooked up in the high-tech ‘hood that hosted the annual bash.…
I’ve always loved the reading rooms of great libraries: the busy hush of research underway; the reluctance of old pages being turned; the furtive glances at the mysterious materials laid out on the desk alongside and at the person who’s ordered them; the fleeting eye contact made over the top of tomes
The challenge was announced six months ago in the heat of the hottest summer on record. A fearless few and a foolish many answered the call immediately. Within minutes trauma hotlines were jammed with calls.…
Why, if a film is meant to be as historically accurate as possible, should its soundtrack be allowed—even encouraged—to be flagrantly out-of-sync with the times and styles being portrayed on screen? Consider two far-from-celebrated examples.…
After the warmest North American December on record, Old Man Winter has finally made his appearance in Upstate New York. With the natural world in full, furious retreat, the seasons increasingly have to be visually…