BROOKLYN, NY; February 6, 2019—Israel G. Young, founder and proprietor of the Greenwich Village Folklore Center from 1957-1973, and the Folklore Centrum in Stockholm from 1973 through the end of last year, died Monday at home in Stockholm. He was 90. Izzy was a mentor to this budding writer even before I started contributing to …
OCT. 23, 2018—We should have known to trust Young Concert Artists. Now in its 58th year introducing young classical musicians and vocalists, most of the artists have both technique and character. Occasionally, we’ve heard someone who was technically excellent without connecting emotionally with the music. But a classical accordion player? What has history led us …
It’s the right confluence of events with: • The Village Trip celebrating the arts in Greenwich Village Sept. 27th-30th; • Girl From the North Country, a wonderful Conor McPherson play with a Depression Era theme that is brilliantly enlarged by some 20 Bob Dylan songs having just begun performances at the Public Theater; and …
There hasn’t been a Village Voice like the one that I had the privilege of writing for in the 1970s for many years. As for many writers, The Voice gave me my start as critic and journalist — thank you Diane Fisher, my editor, wherever you are. I’m saddened by today’s announcement that the Voice …
Stunning aural and visual interpretation of Come All You Coal Miners and Take Me to Harlan by Bela Fleck, Abigail Washburn and Pilobolus. Wrenching and sweet all at once.
January 1973. In Boston to see David Bromberg at Club Passim. The opening act is Bruce Springsteen, of whom I write in the Village Voice, “Springsteen’s band was inordinately loud, which worked to his benefit by covering up his vocals and lyrics.” Summer 1974. At a pool party hosted by the publisher of Record World …
We are in for a bracing year of serious-minded theater in New York City if the first two offerings of the 2017-2018 season at the Signature and Atlantic theater companies are any indication. The searing Fucking A, by Suzan-Lori Parks at the Signature, one of two “riffs” by Parks on The Scarlet Letter, dates to …
It is not easy to feel great about America right now. But there is an antidote. My wife Riva and I spent nine weeks this summer on a cross-country trek in our trusty 2005 Toyota Camry with three hubcaps. “We’re from Brooklyn,” said Riva when I wanted to replace the missing hubcap before we ventured …
Click here for the Spotify playlist. In 1967, I was a student at Far Rockaway High School in Queens, New York. I was participating in anti-Vietnam War marches, with Phil Ochs’s sister, Sonny Ochs, who lived nearby, leading the requisite sing-alongs; spearheading a program to convince the community that permitting a Phoenix House drug rehab …
NEW YORK, NY; December 15, 2016—For well over a decade Riva and I have attended half a dozen Young Concert Artists concerts annually. Winners of the YCA competitions, 16-24, are presented in their NYC recital debuts, typically at Merkin or Zankel Halls. All of these musicians have been supremely talented, but every so often attentiveness …
nightmayer 