2006 September

Amilia K Spicer (the K is silent and has no period, she is quick to note on her website) is a songwriter, pianist, occasional essayist, and sports fan who likes to wear baseball caps. Her 2003 album Seamless found its way to me...

For some years now Western culture, and American culture in particular, has been focused on creating a new future by revisiting and reinterpreting the past in a manner that breaks down generic boundaries. Improvising musicians...

When her eldest son was diagnosed with autism at age three, writer Cammie McGovern did what many mothers in the same situation do: she became a student of the mysterious developmental disorder, devouring the available literature...

One crisp fall night in 1989, some friends and I wandered into a cramped, stinky bar and stood three feet away from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a band that none of us, until that very moment, had ever heard of. We sat right on...

Jason Molina has lived in so many cities, toured with so many backing musicians, and put out so many albums that it's hard to get your head around him. So here are two places to start. The first is Trials & Errors, the...

With a deliriously gorgeous performance by world-renowned artists the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble in April and news of a professional company devoted to Indian classicism to call our own, it's been a great year for Indian...

When you read the poetry of Susan Stewart, you are going to learn things. Interesting things. Things you never knew you wanted to know. Yes, she is indeed an award-winning critic and Princeton professor, but those occupations...

Why did Giuseppe Verdi hate the Catholic Church? There were two reasons, one political, the other personal. First, the church opposed Italian unity, the political cause Verdi fought for all his life. Second, its consolations...