John Cage

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Interview and photos: Gerard Malanga

In Walt Whitman’s notebook for the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass , he writes, “Every soul has its own individual voice.” That notion rang true for photographer/poet/filmmaker Gerard Malanga as he put together “Souls,” an exhibit of 100 portraits span
A gathering of souls
By KRISTEN GOODFRIEND | April 02, 2010

What's new

The timely highlight of Gil Rose’s latest BMOP (Boston Modern Orchestra Project) concert, “Strings Attached,” was a new/old piece (2004, revised 2009) for two string orchestras by Scott Wheeler now called Crazy Weather — the new title taken from a John
BMOP, and the Christian Wolff festival
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | March 26, 2010

The news from No Place

Saya Woolfalk first grabbed people's attention around 2005, with playful-serious installations and videos in which performers masked in bright, patchwork fabric costumes of cartoon leaves and long swinging dreadlocks jumped around small rooms decorated
Saya Woolfalk and the feminist 'heretics'
By GREG COOK | March 12, 2010

2009: The year in Dance

You could say there were two tremendous forces that propelled dance into the world of modern culture: the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev and the choreography of Merce Cunningham.
Milestones and memories
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | December 25, 2009

Review: (Untitled)

Woody Allen might have passed on making this film 35 years ago because it was too dated and middlebrow.
Jonathan Parker's a little too comfortably bourgeois
By PETER KEOUGH | November 13, 2009

Sustainability

If you wanted to know what happened at the Merce Cunningham memorial a week ago Wednesday in the Park Avenue Armory, you could get a thousand answers.
Merce Cunningham in the Park Avenue Armory; Christopher Wheeldon at City Center
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | November 06, 2009

No new age

Yes, this Boston jazz trio incorporates the sounds of seals, tree frogs, and crickets. Yes, one of them is a working ecologist. Here's why you shouldn't hold that against them.
Earthsound is for real
By JON GARELICK | September 25, 2009

No new age

Bound for greatness

Twenty years ago, Damon and Naomi founded Exact Change, a small publishing house (okay, a small publishing room) specializing in a wide range of near-forgotten texts from the far-flung fringes of Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus, and other outcroppings of the 2
An Exact Change sampler
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | September 18, 2009

The best is noise

One night last winter, Thurston Moore and Swedish sax kingpin Mats Gustafsson popped into the Middle East upstairs for an off-the-cuff performance together. The loose group arrangement — Bill Nace and Chris Corsano joined in at the last minute — made fo
Howard Stelzer's tale of the tape
By MATT PARISH | August 14, 2009

Close encounters

Laura Jacobs, who was the dance critic here at the Phoenix in the mid 1980s, is the author of Landscape with Moving Figures, a collection of writing from the New Criterion that's as polemic as it is poetic. But she's also a novelist. Like Women About
Keep your eye on this Bird
By JEFFREY GANTZ | August 07, 2009

Booty call!

"Ladies and gentlemen," a cheerful female voice informs the Huntington Theatre audience, "the Caribbean Light Opera Society is proud to present Pirates! (Or, Gilbert and Sullivan Plunder'd)." The governor, she continues, wants to assure us that there is
The Huntington plunders G&S!
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 29, 2009

Wintry mix

There are so many interesting and unusual musical happenings this week, it's almost more than this little column can bear.
No Triangle, Subliminal Sessions, and the New Music Festival
By SUSANNA BOLLE | January 26, 2009

Rare Frequencies: Callithumpian Consort, Thurston Moore and Bill Nace

Although composer JOHN CAGE is best known for 4'33" of silence, he could raise a ruckus when the mood struck.
Louder than bombs
By SUSANNA BOLLE | January 20, 2009

Chance and dance

For the past three years, one of the prime centers for experimental, improvised, and new music and jazz in Boston has been the Open Sound series in Somerville.
Tim Feeney + Eats Tapes
By SUSANNA BOLLE | August 14, 2008

Post-traumatic earth

With the most unassertive, seemingly egoless moves, Eiko & Koma can evoke the sensations and moods of a universe.
Eiko + Koma and Tere O’Connor at Concord
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | July 23, 2008

Playing the body electric

Chances are, even if you’ve never seen one played, you know what a theremin sounds like.
James Coleman brings his Theremin to the Piano Factory
By SUSANNA BOLLE | July 02, 2008

Text messages

Cross-pollination in the arts shows up in many media, but it is perhaps most evident in dance.
CTS Dance Company’s reverent movements
By JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ | June 04, 2008

Where the chips fell

Dance history reverberated across Boston during the past few weeks, affirming that how we live now owes a lot to how we’ve chosen to remember — and forget.
Marjorie Morgan, Karl Cronin, Lucinda Childs, and Boston Ballet
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | May 28, 2008

Coachella it ain’t

The International Noise Conference started as an acid-tongued spit take on the club-oriented Miami Winter Music Conference.

The INC cometh and Cage's Variations VII

By SUSANNA BOLLE | April 15, 2008

Real to reel

Even now, after Greil Marcus’s Lipstick Traces and Simon Reynolds’s Rip It Up and Start Again , the rock-star-as-vector-of-ideas is still something of a challenge for us.
The exquisite artifice and lasting weirdoid-ness of Roxy Music
By JAMES PARKER | April 01, 2008

Classical shebang

Ain’t nothing’s free — but leave it to the troublemakers at New England Conservatory to kick that idea into last century.

Stephen Drury's modernity

By MICHAEL BRODEUR | January 22, 2008

High techno

A prime place to go if you wanted to hear cutting-edge and classic techno from Germany, Detroit, and beyond has been “Make It New” every Thursday at Middlesex Lounge.
‘Make It New’ turns three, plus Hauschka at the Goethe
By SUSANNA BOLLE | October 30, 2007

Untold tales

Some dances are made on specific story lines that they keep to themselves.
Bebe Miller at the ICA, Kelley Donovan at the Dance Complex
By MARCIA B. SIEGEL | April 26, 2007

What? Institutional? Us?

George Maciunas was the sort of artist who composed musical scores that called for hammering nails into all the keys of a piano.
Fluxus gets the Harvard treatment
By GREG COOK | March 20, 2007

Terpsichore’s delight

Traveling troupes and local dancemakers spring up around the Boston area this season.
The joys of spring dance
By DEBRA CASH | March 13, 2007

Antics ever + anon

Casco Bay Cabaret rollYou may have tossed out your noisemakers and extra lampshades on New Year’s Morning, but the antics of the season certainly aren’t over yet.
Casco Bay Cabaret rolls around for the eighth time
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | January 10, 2007

The many modes of Waits

By TED DROZDOWSKI | November 20, 2006

Talent shows

Amazing but true: each year since 1989, the tireless curatorial team at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park have scoured the New England area to put together a show highlighting artists from the area.
The 2006 DeCordova Annual, plus ‘Art, Theatre, and Engineering’ at MIT
By RANDI HOPKINS | April 28, 2006

Granduer and intimacy

One of the most delightful moments in Mozart comes at the very end of his Symphony No. 39 in E-flat, the first of his last trio of great symphonies.
Frühbeck de Burgos at the BSO, the Borromeos’ Schoenberg, BMOP at Club Café
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | April 18, 2006

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