Word: idioms
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MOST PEOPLE THINK OF CLASSICAL MUSIC as a white enterprise, but two new chamber-music CDs from Koch International Classics celebrate a pair of worthy black composers. The felicitously named SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR (1875-1912), an Anglo-African, was equally at home in the Dvorak-tinged idiom of his Clarinet Quintet and the simple strains of Negro spirituals, which he set compellingly for piano. The album boasts fine performances, especially by pianist Virginia Eskin. WILLIAM GRANT STILL (1895-1978) was similarly eclectic. A staff arranger for the Paul Whiteman band, he could pen a delicate gem like the Seven Traceries...
...popular idiom of the military world, men are men and women are "young ladies." That is, until the men get into trouble for sexually harassing their female colleagues. Then the men are "boys being boys." And the women? Those who deflect sexual advances risk being labeled by some men as lesbians, a threat that can cost a woman her military career. Those who dare to complain are often branded as "too soft." Such is the backdrop against which women in the armed forces must determine whether it is worth registering a complaint when a male colleague steps out of line...
WYNTON MARSALIS: SOUL GESTURES IN SOUTHERN BLUE (Columbia). This three-CD series, recorded in 1987 and 1988, is an ambitious exploration of the most basic jazz idiom: the blues. The 18 sides mark Marsalis' transition from aggressive post-'60s modernism to a more sensual, lyrical style that draws on the work of past masters while forging a personal -- and thoroughly contemporary -- sound...
...Gunners stick to the serious business of rock 'n' roll, synthesizing the Stones and the Sex Pistols to produce Aerosmith for the '90s. They never drift very far from the jackhammer style that began to dominate the idiom two decades ago. This is the main reason their audience is not entirely limited to 16-year-old boys with baseball caps worn backward. Guns N' Roses tenaciously clings to hard rock's tradition of being loud, mean and obvious. No one alive looks more like rock stars than Rose, 29, and guitarist Slash, 26, with their tattoos, their headgear, their emotional...
...first Gorbachev and the reactionaries tried to co-opt each other. One of Gorbachev's aides, fluent in the earthy idiom of American politics, paraphrases a favorite line of Lyndon Johnson's: "Mikhail Sergeyevich felt it was better to have the camels inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. He wanted to keep them where he could see them and where they would have to take his orders. He also wanted to use them to put pressure on the Balts." That arrangement was fine with the reactionaries, since they had considerable latitude in how to interpret...