Christopher O'Riley Connecting with Ann and Stona Fitch is always an occasion for fine food, film and fiction. As the executors of Concord Free Press, they are tireless in their championing many of the brightest, unsung lights of American literature. It was through their advocacy that I came to devote myself to reading the complete work of …
I first came to know of Jeremy Robert Johnson‘s work through the generous and encouraging daisy-chain of recommendations/collaborations/consanguine-writer’s blog-nexes which began for me with Chuck Pahlaniuk and continued through OCDevotional binge-readings of the work of Stephen Graham Jones and Carlton Mellick III, among others. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a novel from JRJ, and …
I think for some reason I have more dear friends in Tucson, where I’ve never lived (but played a lot over the years), than I do anywhere else in the country. At least, I can tell by the fact of my requisite 10 comps per concert, Tucson’s the only place I’ve run out! Played this …
Just wrapped our live taping of From the Top at Montclair State University with our special superstar guests, the Shanghai String Quartet. They closed the show in spectacular style with the Finale of Brahms’ G Major String Sextet alongside two of our young guests, Jasper Snow, viola and Chase Park, cello. As appetizer, for my …
I’ve been a fan of Nikolai Grozni since reading his Wunderkind, a novelization of (his?) life at his native Sofia Music Academy. You can still see his own performances as a wunderkind pianist from those early Bulgarian days. Each chapter of Wunderkind is titled by various works of Chopin, et alia, and there exists no …
Privileged to have read the bound galleys of this, Mark Z. Danielewski ‘s magnum opus (eventually to be comprised of 27 volumes), The Familiar, to be published by Pantheon in May of next year, Volume II soon to follow in the Fall of 2015 (I’ve read drafts of the first 5 or 6 volumes, over …