Divamensch

I saw Emily - No Prisoner Be at Carnegie Hall on Feb 19, 2026. My dear friends Martha and Bill had seen it in Madison the week before and raved about it. Martha told me it was playing at Carnegie Hall, I happened to be available, I bought a ticket in the balcony for $40, I was there. It's a new piece by Kevin Puts, settings of Emily Dickinson poems. It being billed as "a theatrical song cycle" - - for me it exists somewhere between a concert and an opera. It's an opera becau

My brother Howard alerted to me to death of Tom Noonan. I asked him to write about him: Tom Noonan died on Valentine's Day. He was 74 years old. Tom played Tilden in the original Off Broadway cast of Sam Shepard's Pulitzer winning play Buried Child . His tall, wiry frame, intense gaze and quiet, menacing style garnered dozens of remarkable roles in the following decades. Heaven's Gate, F/X, Manhunter, Last Action Hero ... he was even in Gloria and Mystery Train . In 1994 he

First of all, let me share my distaste for the use of the apostrophe in their name. It should be The Go-Gos, am I right? But I guess that looks a little funny. I'm pleased that The B-52s bypass the apostrophe but then I guess it's a little easier to visualize going from a number to a an S versus a letter to an S... ANYWAY, who doesn't love The Go-Go's? Here's the official video for "We Got the Beat," their number one single: That BEAT! I know that the lead singer usually gets

I heard the Akropolis Reed Quintet at Music Mondays on Feb 16, 2026. I'd never heard of a reed quintet and thought maybe they had invented it but I found two other ensembles with the same instrumentation so isn't it nice to learn new things. The instruments are clarinet, oboe (doubling English horn), alto saxophone, bassoon, and bass clarinet. It's a tasty combo with a surprisingly broad range of colors. They opened with a piece written for them, a Mass by Harriet Steinke. Ea