Try to imagine a world without windows, how uninhabitable homes and works spaces would become, how menacing and dystopian buildings would seem from the outside. Windows are an indispensable element in any human abode, an architectural necessity without which interiors becomes oppressive. For those of us inside, they frame fragments of the outer world, letting it in, and for those […]
Arts
New kids album aims to combat ongoing children’s mental health crisis, by Erin DeGregorio
It’s no secret that people are continuing to process their emotions after enduring more than 18 months of uncertainty, separation, stress, and yearning for “normalcy.” With that in mind, Mil’s Trills, a Brooklyn-based children’s music project released its fourth album, Let It Out! on September 29. It was made and mastered within eight months, in an urgent effort to combat […]
Lion In Winter, by George Grella
Late style, the idea that an artist’s work changes markedly as they see the end of life on the horizon, is mainly reserved for discussions of literary figures, or else musicians, like Beethoven, that literary figures hear of enough to dig, if not understand. Another way to put it is that it is a middle-to-highbrow topic that you can read […]
Wiggly Air, by Kurt Gottschalk
ON DECK Melvins unapologetically unplugged. Way back in 2014, the mighty King Buzzo made his NYC solo debut with an acoustic set at Santos Party House, and it was even more epic than the album (This Machine Kills Artists) he was supporting. The guy is a solid rock star, from the hair to the unaffected vocals to the measured perfection […]
Opera: by Frank Raso
Fire Shut Up In My Bones The Metropolitan Opera reopened on September 27 with the Met Premiere of a new opera Fire Shut Up In My Bones, which is the first opera by a black composer to be performed at the Met. The opera, which has a libretto by Kasi Lemmons, is based on a memoir by Charles Blow, about […]
The Queen of All She Sees, by Kurt Gottschalk
Rock and Roll Priestess Patti Smith Returns to SummerStage (photo by Marissa Blitz) I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Patti Smith. On the street in the West Village one momentarily thrilling winter afternoon, but besides that, in concert, more than a half dozen times, and most of them outdoors. She gives to New York. The first was at […]
The Suave Sound of a Generation , by Rocio Gomez
Music has been the sound of humanity’ s oppressions and will since the beginning of times, sharing it’s essence with revolutionary and changing periods. “ Allen A, better known by Suave_A, has been surrounded by instruments since he was a school boy going to church. Coming from a Haitian heritage, and growing up in the Caribbean section of Flatbush, the […]
Storm Lake: A Call to Arms for the Future of American Journalism, by Dante A. Ciampaglia
American journalism is on the ropes. The nation has lost one in four newspapers — 2,100 publications — since 2019. (That number has surely grown during the pandemic.) Half of what’s left is owned by vulture capitalists, private equity firms and hedge funds that have perverted local media ownership into cynical resource extraction. Newsrooms are gutted, and what’s left is […]
On Air, with Radio Free Brooklyn, by Michael Cobb
For Rachel Cleary, the dream of starting a radio station came about while in repose on her living room sofa. She was initially inspired by her desire to translate her experiences at open mics to radio. She recalls discussing the idea with her partner Robert Prichard and friend Tom Tenney. “We knew a physical location was too expensive. They got […]
Survival Mission, Review by Michael Quinn
Review of Black Star by Eric Anthony Glover, illustrated by Arielle Jovellanos Extreme temperatures. Flash flood alerts. Wildfires. Sounds like this past summer, no? These conditions are also found on the fictional planet Eleos, the setting for Eric Anthony Glover’s debut graphic novel, Black Star. Brilliantly illustrated by Arielle Jovellanos, the story follows an all-female team of scientists dispatched on […]