Kurt Elling and Danilo Pérez Prove ‘Secrets Are the Best Stories’
Kurt Elling's collaboration with pianist Danilo Pérez features impressionistic and daring playing and poetic lyrics, making it one of the highlights of a brilliant jazz vocal career.
poetry
What’s Love Got To Do with It? Shakespeare’s ‘Venus & Adonis’
The worn trope—Time Devours All Things (tempus edax rerum)—is true for human beings, says Shakespeare: if you're a mortal, death lurks at the heart of the very thing you most want. During a plague, or a pandemic, it's wanting that endangers us.
Oakland Homeless Heart Collective Dares You to Care About All of Your Neighbors
Across more than 20 short tracks, Homeless Oakland Heart captures the broken heart of the Bay straight from the mouths of some of those who have suffered the most at its feet.
For Ben Goldberg It’s a ‘Good Day for Cloud Fishing’
Composer and clarinetist Ben Goldberg writes tunes inspired by the poetry of Dean Young for a shimmering trio, which in turn inspired new poems.
‘The Poetry of Pop’, Stretches the Definition of Pop Generously
Adam Bradley's The Poetry of Pop works for what it obviously wants to be, a primer on American popular music.
Kate Tempest Takes on the UK Establishment with ‘The Book of Traps and Lessons’ and Wins
The Book of Traps and Lessons reveals Kate Tempest's disdain with contemporary society while also envisioning a future where it all can be changed. With a flair for hip-hop laced with Marxism, the album is poetic artistry.
Hold Your Own: An Interview with Kate Tempest
On any given day, you may see Kate Tempest working as a poet. Or maybe a playwright. Or a spoken-word artist with hip-hop connections. As she celebrates the release of her third album, she reflects on where her place is in Britain's powerful cultural moment.
When You Speak to Your Muse, Does It Answer? It Does in ‘Boss Broad’
Wild rebellion and reckless combat are increasingly less valued than ethical wit and spiritual sustenance in Megan Volpert's entertaining and insightful Boss Broad.
Brian Selznick Communicates Wordlessly with Walt Whitman in Abram’s ‘Live Oak, with Moss’
Language and image never combine in Abrams' Live Oak, with Moss; they are distant lovers, if you will, as divided as Walt Whitman and Brian Selznick are as collaborators.
A Translator Between Worlds: On Behrouz Boochani’s Work from the Manus Island Prison Camp
His intellectual and journalistic training, coupled with an eloquent capacity for literary expression, enables Behrouz Boochani to bridge the lived experience of refugees with non-refugee audiences and to express it in the context of the critical social and political theory which shapes intellectual elites' understanding of the refugee crisis.
UnZipped: Vanessa Daou and Erica Jong on the Making of the Electronica Classic ‘Zipless’
Celebrating Zipless's nearly 25 years of existence with a new vinyl reissue, Vanessa Daou and Erica Jong continue to take listeners on a personal and intimate journey through the passionate exploits of this landmark work.
From Paris, with Poetry: On Henri Cole’s ‘Orphic Paris’
Henri Cole's Orphic Paris mines the city of light to illuminate the ends of his art.
