Legion are the books on jazz that wave the banner of “revolution” above the chapter devoted to bebop, the improvised American music of swerving light…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
The one thing you can say about the all-too-familiar genre of posthumous documentary in which dozens of admirers bear dutiful witness to the deceased’s unrecognized…
Many have had a go at explaining the madness of Hamlet, not least generations of high school and college students faced with faking their way…
Organists have long been present at, indeed participants in, great political events: the 759 Byzantine delegation from Constantinople to the French court of Pippin the…
It is late August and millions of North Americans and Europeans continue to mass on beaches from Cape Code to the Costa del Sol, the…
I learned of Clancy Sigal’s death on July 16th only on returning home Saturday to Ithaca, New York after five weeks on the road. I…
Histories of the organ draw a stark distinction between the instrument’s origins in antiquity, where it was deployed in the arena to accompany gladiatorial combat,…
It there’s one comfort to be had in the mad scrum of high summer tourism it is that the crowds can still be escaped, even…
The late 1950s were great years for black-and-white movies in France: I’m referring specifically to those with white people on screen, and black musicians invisible…