I’ll never look at paper dolls the same again.  That’s because I recently befriended the greatest living creator of the art form, 83-year old Tom Tierney. Now I certainly didn’t go looking to chat up a paper doll artist, which made the whole experience all the more special.  Here’s the story… My boyfriend Doug and I were driving from Houston to Austin last Sunday, and stopped in the little town of Smithville, population...

More than two dozen GLTB singer/songwriters and bands will be performing during “Out In The Woods,” a marathon of music on two stages this weekend at Easton Mountain, the gay retreat center north of Albany. The event was conceived and organized by Steve Sims, who’s become well known in the Out Music worlds as co-host of The Quest of Life, a radio show from WRPI-FM in Troy.  Launched in 2004, the broadcast...

The American composer celebrated his 85th birthday on February 17 and died on March 28.  A former protege of Barber and Menotti, Hoiby lived in a remote corner of the Catskills Mountains with his partner of many years, Mark Shulgasser. In all he wrote eight staged works, and his web site lists “Romeo & Juliet” as in progress. Opera News obituary New York Times obituary Please share your memories of Lee here. Previously...

The concert hall in the woods just outside Woodstock is fondly known as The Maverick. But its summer presentations are often rather traditional servings of chamber music and solo recitals. This Saturday night, pianist Pedja Muzijevic will present a program wildly varied enough to be described as mavericky. Along with Schumann’s “Carnaval” and some little sonatas by Scarlatti, there will be transcriptions of Wager and...

Chris Lastovicka swears that she never thought of the gay allegory in her opera about UFOs and alien abduction until I asked.  Maybe I’ve just been exposed to too much queer theory and too many “gay readings” of the Harry Potter books, in which the magically gifted (GLTB folks) are hopelessly lost among the muggles (straights). But the opera “Crossing the Horizon” is, after all, a collaboration between two lesbian...

Pianist Theresa L. Bogard has been a specialist in women composers, performing works of Louis Talma, Margaret Bonds, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and Mrs. H. H. A. Beach among many others. Her 1998 disc of music by Talma received the Gay & Lesbian American Music Award for Best Classical Performance.  A faculty member at the University of Wyoming, Bogard earned her D.M.A. at the University of Colorado and also studied at the...

After being a fixture in lower Manhattan for several decades, lesbian composer Eve Beglarian has gone on a yearlong quest in search of America. For her exploration of the heartland she’s traversing our continent’s major artery, the Mississippi River. Her journey began in August at the river’s headwaters in Lake Itasca, Minnesota. With a car, a kayak, and a bike, plus the company of various fellow travelers (friends who...

Twenty years before actress Meryl Streep and author/director Nora Ephron brought Julia Child to the silver screen with “Julie & Julia,” composer Lee Hoiby put the famous chef on the operatic stage.  His operetta “Bon Appetit!” starred Jean Stapleton (Edith Bunker) and debuted at the Kennedy Center in 1989 before going on to a successful run Off Broadway. Like many of Hoiby’s other theatrical works, “Bon Appetit!”...

It’s easy to drive right past the town without even noticing it. A smattering of old buildings on Route 29 northeast of Greenwich in Washington County, Battenville sits beside the Batten Kill and was briefly the home of Susan B. Anthony, who taught school there in 1826. In 1971, artists Robert Nunnelley and Gerald Coble bought an 18th-century house to serve as their country home and studio. Since then, the two men –...