Dave Frishberg:  My Attorney Bernie

Dave Frishberg: My Attorney Bernie

Dave Frishberg has the most urbane sense in his songs. He writes about everyday things but somehow makes them oh so cool. I mean, what’s so great about your lawyer? If you have one, maybe you are having problems. And they are so expensive! But My Attorney Bernie makes...
Gustav Mahler:  Ablösung Im Sommer

Gustav Mahler: Ablösung Im Sommer

Summer is usually the time when love has the greatest opportunity to bloom. The soft evenings, the lingering twilight, the wonderful cuisine—fresh produce of every kind—all add up to an awakening of the senses. The collection of German folk poetry Des Knaben...
Hector Berlioz:  La Spectre de la Rose

Hector Berlioz: La Spectre de la Rose

Summer is full of nature, and it’s the time we usually get out into it, and let our senses partake of the beauty, inhale smells, and feel warm breezes on our skin. Then there is the plucked flowers perspective. Death is imminent, but the rose lives on as an unworldly...
Pedrito Martinez: Ay Amor

Pedrito Martinez: Ay Amor

It’s really summer now. When August first rolls around, the end of summer is in sight. But, we still have a delicious month left before the kids (and many of the grown ups)  go back to school, and back to their quotidian routines. But since we have a month, this week...
Samuel Barber:  Knoxville: Summer of 1915

Samuel Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915

Soon after Samuel Barber was commissioned by soprano Eleanor Steber to compose a work for her, he stumbled upon a long prose poem by James Agee, published in The Partisan Review. “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” was a deceptively simple piece that, as its author later...