- Dan Chiasson: Peter Gizzi’s “Threshold Songs,” D.?A. Powell’s “Useless Landscape.”
8220;Threshold Songs” (Wesleyan), the fifth book by the experimental American poet Peter Gizzi, arrives after the hardest of hard periods, when Gizzi lost three of the people dearest to him: a close friend, his mother, and his brother, the poet Michael Gizzi. The book is dedicated to them . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Thomas Hampson @ Alice Tully Hall
The ardent American baritone honors the anniversaries of two great song composers, performing Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” (in the manuscript version of twenty songs) and Barber’s James Joyce songs, Op. 10, and “Three Songs,” Op. 45, in a concert sponsored by the New York Philharmonic. (Alice Tully Hall. 212-875-5656. April 11 at 5.) April 11 Broadway at...
- The Best Songs to Teach Children Who Are Learning Guitar
Do you know a child who is learning guitar? You might be wondering what songs to teach them as they take their first musical steps with the instrument. There are many songs that can be fun for children to learn, but in this article rather than give a list of titles we'll look at some principles you can use to choose songs that will make good learning material....
- Ben Greenman: “Songs and Stories,” with Joe Ely, Terry Allen, and Ryan Bingham.
Back in the early nineties, there was a concert trend in which a group of songwriters would sit onstage on stools, tell stories about their songs, and then play them. This could be a rewarding, intimate look inside the songwriting process or it could be a shambles, with disjointed sets . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Dorothea Röschmann: Songs by Schumann, Mahler, and Wolf @ Zankel Hall—Carnegie Hall
Songs by Schumann—“Frauenliebe und -leben” and the Mary Stuart songs, Op. 135—anchor a program by the rich-voiced and communicative soprano that also features lieder by Mahler and Wolf. (Zankel Hall. 212-247-7800. April 12 at 7:30.) April 12 Seventh Ave. at 57th St., New York, N.Y. 212-247-7800 . . ....
- Goings on About Town: Readings and Talks
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The singer-songwriter Josh Ritter talks about his début novel, “Bright’s Passage,” with the journalist Katherine Lanpher. Ritter will also perform a few songs. (Barnes & Noble, 33 E. 17th St. 212-253-0810. June 28 at 7 . . ....
- Goings on About Town: Readings and Talks
goatTitle-->“UPSTAIRS AT THE SQUARE”
Rebecca Skloot talks about her book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” with the journalist Katherine Lanpher, and the local dance band Cubic Zirconia performs a few songs. (Barnes & Noble Union Square, 33 E. 17th St. 212-253-0810. March 9 . . ....
- Books: “Electric Eden.”
This sprawling, mesmerizing exploration of “Britain’s visionary music” examines the idiosyncratic folk-influenced musicians of the late sixties and early seventies. Young begins with Vashti Bunyan, who wrote plaintive songs while travelling across industrial England by horse and cart, and focusses on performers who drew on . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Dora Malech: “Country Songs.”
My man does his crying on a fast horse.
I do my best dancing with strangers.
The child screams through the moment
of silent prayer, says “It’s a free country,”
says “You and what army.” You can’t
trespass on a river, you . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Sasha Frere-Jones: Robyn’s versatile pop.
Robyn’s new album, “Body Talk Pt. 1,” provides eight handsomely formed, near-perfect pop songs that are embedded with a casual kind of feminism. Robyn, a small, delicate-looking thirty-one-year-old Swede, is remarkably adept at producing pleasurable, accessible pop that, like some kind . . ....
- Alec Wilkinson: JD Souther in the American Songbook, at Lincoln Center.
JD Souther, who is sixty-six, lives on a farm outside Nashville, and is most widely known for his part in writing sombre, elegiac songs that the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt made famous, such as “New Kid in Town,” “Heartache Tonight,” and “Faithless Love.” . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Goings on About Town: Sounds of Silver
8220;I got pills that make me cranky / I got pills that make me cry” is the casually debauched first line of “Teenage Lightning,” a 2002 song by the rock band Luna that also appears on “Thirteen Most Beautiful . . . Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen . . ....
- Good Songs to Learn on Guitar – Know the Basics
If you have landed here while searching for good songs to learn on guitar as a beginner, then pause for a while and read this. You must first get a short guideline before you move on to any other website....
- Goings on About Town: Readings and Talks
goatTitle-->BOOKCOURT
Mark Kurlansky, the author of “Cod,” “Salt,” and “The Big Oyster,” among many other books, discusses his latest release, “World Without Fish,” an illustrated assessment of the future of the oceans. (163 Court St., Brooklyn. 718-875-3677. April 20 at . . ....
- Books: “The Inner Life of Empires.”
The eleven Johnstone siblings of Westerhall, in Scotland, were “a large and disorderly family,” whose lives, playing out on three continents between 1723 and 1813, illuminate what Rothschild calls an “empire of intimate exchanges.” The subject is well chosen and provocatively explored. One brother was a . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Alex Ross: A night of Schubert and Beckett.
Schubert’s “Winterreise,” twenty-four numbingly beautiful songs on texts by Wilhelm Müller, opens with the lines “I came here as a stranger / A stranger I depart.” The words seem to be a typical specimen of Romantic angst, but Schubert transforms them into . . ....
- Books: “Is That a Fish in Your Ear?” review.
This lively survey asks “what translation has done in the past and does today,” and “whether it is one thing or many.” In thirty-two wide-ranging chapters, Bellos variously corrects bits of misguided folk wisdom (Eskimo, it turns out, does not have a hundred words . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Russell Platt: Othmar Schoeck’s “Notturno.”
Though usually pegged as a conservative, the Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck (1886-1957) was, in fact, too original for his own good. In his finest songs, an “accessible” late-Romantic lyricism exists uneasily alongside an emotional intensity that can be as painfully personal as the confessional poetry of Lowell . . ....
- Goings on About Town: Above and Beyond
goatTitle-->BIG RED CHAIR FAMILY SERIES
The singer, songwriter, and guitarist Dan Zanes kicks off the fall season of performances for the younger set at the Skirball Center with songs from his new release, “Little Nut Tree,” his follow-up to his album “Catch That Train . . ....
- Books: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s “Life Upon These Shores,” review.
Beginning with the twenty or so Angolan slaves brought to Jamestown in 1619 and ending with the election of Barack Obama, this copiously illustrated history sets out, as Gates puts it, “to find a new way of looking” at the “full sweep” of African-American history . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Alex Ross: Remembering the composer Peter Lieberson and his masterwork, “Neruda Songs.”
In his youth, the composer Peter Lieberson, who died on April 23rd, at the age of sixty-four, met Igor Stravinsky. His father, the record executive Goddard Lieberson, said to the grand old man, “Peter wants to be a composer.” Stravinsky replied, “It is not enough to . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Some Easy to Play Guitar Songs For the Beginners
We should initially start with easy to play guitar songs if we want to be perfect, though one must move gradually and step by step to the other difficult numbers later on. For example, start with 1-2 chords. ...
- Goings on About Town: Classical Music
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CONCERTS IN TOWN
“TWIN SPIRITS”
The rock icon Sting has made genuinely serious efforts to engage with classical music: his John Dowland album, “Songs from the Labyrinth,” had a craggy authority that made it worth a Deutsche Grammophon release. He and his wife, Trudie . . ....
- Sasha Frere-Jones: How Merrill Garbus left the theatre and took the stage.
In 2004, Merrill Garbus created an adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” called “Fat Kid Opera,” whose songs she composed on soprano ukulele. The piece was, in part, a commentary on the George W. Bush Presidency, and it featured a pantyhose puppet called . . . (Subscription required.)...
- Books: “The Promise.”
This chronicle of the first year of the Obama Presidency argues that Obama took charge well before he was elected, when the economy imploded, in September, 2008. Operating in crisis mode since then, he has brought to the White House a “Zen temperament,” a strategically chosen Cabinet, and . . ....
- Blake’s Attitude Towards Childhood
Blake was thirty years of age when he began to write the "Songs of Innocence." This is an astounding fact, for the "Song of Innocence" expresses for the first time in English literature the spontaneous happiness of childhood....
- Goings on About Town: Readings and Talks
goatTitle-->“THALIA BOOK CLUB”
Joan Didion discusses her new memoir, “Blue Nights,” about the death of her daughter, Quintana Roo, at age thirty-nine, with her nephew, the actor Griffin Dunne. (Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th St. 212-864-5400. Nov. 30 at 7:30.)
THE POWERHOUSE . . ....
- Books: “Rawhide Down.”
Wilber provides a minute-by-minute reconstruction of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, outside the Washington Hilton, on March 30, 1981. It’s a harrowing story, more so than it seemed at the time, and Wilber, a reporter for the Washington Post, has tracked down virtually everyone who . . . (Subscription required.)...
