I discovered Gladys Knight around 2005 on a free soul CD that came with a Sunday paper. It was Midnight Train to Georgia which I loved for the intensity, the powerful vocals, and the rather unusual ma...
Annie Lennox posted on her Facebook page a video of Dionne Warwick’s song Walk On By, composed by Burt Bacharach. As she says, “I’ve always been drawn to the alchemy of Bert Bacharac...
Riga 2013, a set on Flickr. I went to Elton John concert in Tallinn last year. I chose to fly with AirBaltic that took me to Estonia’s capital via Riga, the capital of Latvia. On my way back I c...
The legend has it that Igor Stravinsky received an idea for his famous ballet in his sleep. Whether or not this is true, the potency of his imagination and the ability to bring it to the material worl...
At the end of January I attended the last concert in a series of three dedicated to the sixtieth anniversary of one of the world’s finest violists and certainly Russia’s greatest viola tal...
The town and vicinity of Tarusa are well-known for the love that great Russian artists, musicians, and writers had for it. I mentioned previously that Marina Tsvetaeva, Konstantin Paustovsky, Viktor B...