The great American pianist Cedar Walton died last week at the age of 79 at his home in Brooklyn after a short illness. Like almost all jazz musicians, Walton made his living largely on the…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
The summer road trip seems to offer the chance to catch up on all those recordings accumulated over the previous year. Depending on your perspective, the endless government pork ladled out onto the highways of…
Aside from its winning title, the best material offered up by the documentary film Twenty Feet from Stardom are the musical performances, seen and — more important — heard both in footage of concerts extending…
How did I get into this? That’s the inevitable question of concert day, one that has been gnawing at the performer’s nerves through the preceding night, perhaps for days before. You’ve practiced for weeks on…
Whether on silver screen or in symphony hall, it can be a curse to be type cast. So consummately did Bach play the part of a composer of learned fugues that his lighter side is…
As has become even clearer this Fourth of July with the ongoing saga of fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden playing out on the world stage, what was celebrated on Independence Day in America is not independence…
No work of music has a greater lock on a single ritual than Edward Elgar’s Pomp & Circumstance March No. 1 does on American graduations. Cock an ear in the direction of high school and…