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Video games are one of my great passions in life. I'm not kidding. I think the medium is absolutely fascinating, and have thought so since I was a child and discovered Baldur's Gate and Final Fantasy VII. You can laugh. The debate as to whether video games count as...
I encourage all of you to explore Björk's work. Most of us think of her as that crazy Icelandic woman who showed up to the Oscars in a swan dress—how outré! She's actually a prolific producer, composer, and performer of her own music. Her singing really threw me at...
One morning you wake up and a schoolmate of yours just won a Pulitzer. Another morning, you wake up and a bunch of your friends (and their friends) just won a Grammy. That second event might happen more than once if your friends are in the...
In preparation for my sister's move to Israel this year, I asked her for a list of Israeli pop music I could listen to—you know, for my own edification. “Start with Idan Raichel,” she said. I'd heard of him, I thought, vaguely, but I wasn't prepared for what his music...
Singer-songwriter-pianist Regina Spektor is a force of nature. I am not cool enough to have heard of her before she was cool—I encountered her when I saw her music video for “Fidelity,” like everybody else. Remember that song where they were in a totally white room...
“Kafka Fragments” has the dubious, possibly oxymoronic distinction of being a famous piece of contemporary vocal chamber music – that is to say, people in certain circles feel it's overdone and basically nobody else has ever heard of it. It's an hour-long song cycle...