Jeff Goldblum & the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra: A Jazz Surprise in Austin
I had not heard about Jeff Goldblum’s involvement with the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra until recently, and the discovery came as a surprise. After all, I used to spend Monday nights…
The Pairing Project: How a Chef, a Storyteller, and a Wine Nerd Turned Austin’s Homes into Tasting Rooms
When Alexander and Carlotta “Loti” first locked eyes 32 years ago at a lunch on the outskirts of Mexico City, neither imagined that a decades-long love story would eventually set…
THE FRAGILITY OF THE HUMAN HEART: Eugene Onegin in Houston
Eugene Onegin explores the fragility of the human heart and how unspoken words can shape destinies. That description of the famous ballet, set to the music of Tchaikovsky, is by…
IMAGINATION: The Brain’s Meeting Place for Opposites
Image: John Donne (1572-1631) This book on imagination in English literature of the 1500s and early 1600s is edited by professors at two institutions in Canada (their bio data is…
Little Shop of Horrors at City Theatre
— camp, teeth, and a killer good time Open the doors and the doo-wop hits you first—those tight, girl-group harmonies that make the Lower East Side feel close enough to…
Architectural Images and Early Modern Science
The intersection between architecture and science in the 1500s is one that remains largely unexplored. By looking at the art of Wendel Dietterlin (1550–1599) a whole new approach to the…
An Inclination to Rest in Uncertainty
Even before Shakespeare wrote “hap by hap may” in Taming of the Shrew in 1623, Raphael Holinshed employed the phrase “the hap of things” in his famed 1587 book Chronicles.…
The Poetry of Listening
Kevin Witt’s b-side opened the set at Batch with a question directed to the audience: “What is jazz?” And with the tune, Contemplation by McCoy Tyner, circling the room like…
Time Passes: Tsai Ming-Liang Brings His Meditative Cinema to Texas for the First Time
The lights were low inside the AFS Cinema. The theater was empty, its rows of seats waiting for the audience that would soon arrive. Onstage, under the glow of a…
Nothing can be compared to you, Rome
Image: Emperor Maximilian I My headline comes from a poem written in the 12th century, but its opening line does not prepare one for the punchline. The four lines in…