Like an obnoxiously drunk, loudmouthed, long-winded, overly-pleased-with-himself, vacuously ostentatious guest who refuses to leave the party even though it’s long been over, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby lingers at the local multiplex, Scotch in one…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
The rolling storm that is Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring thundered through its hundredth anniversary last Wednesday, the 29th of May. I spent most of the day at 39,000 feet, high above global festivities that included…
Bach was buried on July 31, 1750, three days after his death, on the south side of St. John’s church outside the walls of the city of Leipzig. So-called “extramural” (outside-the-walls) burial became the norm after the introduction of the Lutheran Reformation in Leipzig in the 1530s.
I never got around to writing my intended tribute to the great American bassist Ron Carter last year at this time on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Carter entered the jazz canon 50 years…
Any musician on the road, especially one who plays the organ, frequently confronts the contrast between suburban periphery and urban center—or what’s left of it. Typically the best instruments are in venerable churches in the…
A handful of tax resisters lingered outside of the post office in downtown Ithaca on Monday into the early evening when I walked by, my return already filed electronically earlier that day. The protesters formed…
The intemperate genius John Bull was born in either 1562 or 1563. Let’s choose the later of these two possibilities and duly celebrate 2013 as Bull’s 450th. In contrast to the archetypal Englishman John Bull,…