My ears aren’t shutting down but this site is going on hiatus. Apologies to my faithful readers and to artists who have sent me discs or participated in interviews.  While a source of pride, this site has been a labor of love and generosity of time can only go so far.  I continue as a contributor to the Times Union in Albany, NY and will cross-post occasional stories that are relevant to this site.  A new pursuit is modern...

I sat down inside a pause in time In a still pool of silence a formidable ring, where bright stars crashed into the twelve black, floating numerals. from Ode to Walt Whitman and Other Poems, Translated by Carlos Bauer (1988 City Lights Books)

Hello again  This is your overhead operator I am the big message at the end of your beep If I plug you in   will you return my call? Call me Old Man Puck   Call me Peter Panic Call me what you will but call for dear life I offer any number of far out connections As an unlisted long-distance metaphysician I service a direct line to outer spaces but I’m a down-to-earth sugeon when it comes to the heart My goal is to...

“How could you have corrupted a nice boy like that? my father asked me out of your hearing when for Thanksgiving I brought you home. It was easy — I drew on your already having been corrupted by a dream, which after meeting you that night at Chaps I helped you realize. I only failed in not being able to draw corruption out for good.  Instead, we became friends — with a similar dream. Or is it — corrupt, I mean?...

When I was a kid in summer camp, around 13teen & one night I lay asleep in bungalow bed with 13teen other boys, when in comes one of the camp councilors who is nice fellow that likes ya, comeing to my bed, sits down & starts to say: now you will be leaving soon back to Flushing & I may never see you again — but if theres ever aneything I can do to help ya let me know, my farther is a lawyer & I live at such...

Scott Pender is a Washington DC-based composer and occasional contributor to this site.  His chamber piece “In the Time Before” was just released on Navona Records. “Post-minimalist” is an entirely accurate description for the piece.  As Scott explains in his program note, he was inspired to sit down and write it after hearing Steve Reich’s Double Sextet in a performance by the Bang on a Can...

Small town boy comes to big city.  Discovers his talents, discovers himself.  Has difficult phone calls back home.  It’s a familiar but sturdy set-up for a film. Yet rather than being a boxer, the young man is a dancer. The film is “Five Dances” by Alan Brown, whose previous efforts include “Private Romeo,” a gay retelling of “Romeo & Juliet.”  The star is Ryan Steele and...

Peter died in a paper tiara cut from a book of princess paper dolls; he loved royalty, sashes and jewels. I don’t know, he said, when he woke in the hospice, I was watching the Bette Davis film festival on Channel 57 and then — At the wake, the tension broke when someone guessed the casket closed because he was in there in a big wig and heels, and someone said, You know he’s always late, he probably isn’t...

Stunning talent, a likable personality and lots of embarrassing but hilarious personal anecdotes were packed into Alan Cumming’s cabaret show Sunday night at Club Helsinki in Hudson (12/2/12).          Though he’s gone on to triumph in television and film, it was a Broadway role — the emcee in “Cabaret” — that made Cumming famous.  He offered one selection from that show, “Mein Herr.”  Otherwise,...

Hold on to your Santa hat. John Waters is coming to town. Like a St. Nic for the adult set, the filmmaker, author and raconteur arrives with a sleigh full of nostalgic, smutty fun. It’s all done up as “A John Waters Christmas,” a touring show presented on Sunday night at The Egg (12/2, Albany NY). (See full schedule below.) “You could call it my obsession, having the right kind of Christmas,” says Waters. “But...