LATEST ADDITIONS

At the sight of blackbirds
<BR>
Flying in a green light,
<BR>
Even the bawds of euphony
<BR>
Would cry out sharply.

Bagheera watches Huckleberry bird watch. If he starts making the <I>chit chit</I> noise, she'll reckon it's worth checking out for herself.

I don’t want to write too much about any one musician, but I just got back from seeing clarinetist Anat Cohen’s quartet at the Village Vanguard, and I can’t resist. Her CD, <I>Poetica</I>, is one of the year’s fresh surprises—breezy, heady, and warm (see my <A HREF="http://blog.stereophile.com/fredkaplan/061707jazz/">blog of June 17</A>)—but it’s a mere shadow of what she does live. She plays with a perfect clean tone and an insouciant virtuosity combined with a hip-swaying, eyes-rolling, wide-smiling swing—or with a breath-stopping melancholy, depending on the song.

This clip has it all: Bob Fosse choreography, psychedelic Bach, frug-dancing zombie hippies, and Sammy Davis as a manic street preacher.
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Ants aren't smart. Ant colonies are. Now we're studying how that works.

Ferdinand Mount's new novel features the Marquis de Condorcet, Thomas Jefferson, the Duke and Duchess de la Rochefoucauld, Jefferson's secretary William Short, Sally Hemings, Lafayette, and Robespierre&mdash;seldom, according to Adam Thorpe, to their credit.

What's amazing (and absolutely obvious, depending on how you look at it) is that I listen to music differently now. I mean, my teenage ears don't have very much in common with my soon-to-be 30 year old ears.