By William Webster
New Yorker music critic Alex Ross’ recent positive review of a concert featuring the compositions of Steve Reich at New York’s Carnegie Hall made me look forward to the presentation of the same program at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music late last month. Reich has garnered considerable attention and respect as one […]

By Caldwell Titcomb
The operas of Lee Hoiby don’t come around often, but the best known of his seven stage works is Summer and Smoke, based on the play by Tennessee Williams. I still vividly remember the 1952 New York production of the play, which put off-Broadway firmly on the map and elevated the late Geraldine […]

By Caldwell Titcomb
There are many who claim that the Berlin Philharmonic is the greatest symphony orchestra in the world. Whether true or not, this formidable institution visited Boston’s Symphony Hall this week, led by Sir Simon Rattle (b. 1955). From 1980 to 1998 Rattle raised the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to the top rank, […]

By Caldwell Titcomb
Boston now knows what the international shouting has been about this year. In the field of classical music, the greatest buzz has focused on the frizzy-haired young conductor Gustavo Dudamel and his Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela (SBYO), which came to town for a November 7 concert in Symphony Hall.

Gustavo Dudamel in […]

Ben Ratliff, Coltrane: The Story of a Sound (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Reviewed by J. R. Carroll
During an interview in Japan in 1966, John Coltrane was asked what he would like to be in ten years. Coltrane replied, “I would like to be a saint.” Lewis Porter, author of the definitive study John Coltrane: His Life […]

The Decemberists are passionate, intense and they put on one hell of a show.
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The Pogues are back and they’re ready to rock.
The Pogues

By Milo Miles 
Bob Dylan, Hard Times (Columbia)
Ornette Coleman, Sound Grammar (Sound Grammar)
Sonny Rollins, Sonny, Please (Doxy)
Andrew Hill, Time Lines (Blue Note)
Lee Scratch Perry, Panic in Babylon (Narnack)
Jerry Lee Lewis, Last Man Standing (Artists First)
Canny music performers understand nowadays that success, even in the youth-obsessed field of pop music, can come often and at any age. […]

I knew something had changed when I was in a crowded downtown bar, filled with twenty-somethings sipping Red Bull and vodka and Pabst Blue Ribbon, and the opening chords of “Ring of Fire” evoked instant cheers and singing. The hype surrounding “Walk the Line” officially secured Johnny Cash a spot on the must-have music list […]

It’s no surprise that it took both the band and the audience several songs before either was able to relax and mutually enjoy the enormity of what took place Monday evening at Avalon. The club was packed, with little space to either move or breathe, by 8:30 p.m. as fans awaited the reunited Alice in […]