The number-one issue that 98 percent of New Yorkers care about is affordable housing. I have been studying the successful affordable housing programs in Singapore. New York City could learn a lot. Let’s look at the work of Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. This guy was loved by the masses. Lee Kuan Yew was originally a union organizer and […]
Author: A Star-Revue Contributor
PAVE goes to camp, by Maren Morsch
Nearly 60 eighth-graders from Red Hook’s PAVE Academy traveled to Warren County, New Jersey, to spend three days on the campus of the Princeton-Blairstown Center (PBC) last week. There, the scholars participated in tailored programming designed to increase community bonding and foster teamwork and communication skills. “We hoped our students would have a stronger sense of community after this trip. […]
Dustin Yellin’s big table, by John Buchanan
The following is an interview with artist Dustin Yellin, founder of Pioneer Works. RHSR: What’s the genesis of your work? Yellin: The works in this building are of the three hands: the Descriptive, the Prescriptive, and the Impossible. The Descriptive being how do you use different mediums to tell stories, narrative stories, and that’s what you see happening in the […]
Spotify, Apple, streaming and stereos, by Jack Grace
Listening to music on the speaker of a cell phone is about as enjoyable as eating a burrito through a straw. You can get the taste but did you really experience the textures it had to offer? Ok, get yourself a damn high quality stereo already and listen to it often. Yes, vinyl is that good; it’s not just a […]
A beautiful night celebrating Prince, by Kurt Gottschalk
For an artist of such enormous popularity for such a long period of time, Prince was never one to fall in line with expectations. He played sexuality and spirituality side by side, willfully crossed perceived lines of race, gender and musical genre and insisted on musical autonomy where most artists in his league happily cash the corporate checks. So an […]
Records of records, by George Grella
Would jazz have anywhere the accumulated history if its development had not coincided with that of audio recording and reproduction technology? As an art form, it’s gloriously impure, not only stitched together at its base with musical ideas from multiple traditions but integrated into the rise of the record business from the very start – two important early jazz labels, […]
Cold metal for the long winter, by Kurt Gottschalk
Sunn O))) – Pyroclasts (Southern Lord) LIke Drone Razors Through Flesh Sphere – Sacred Quietus (Zazen Sounds) Every so often, a band comes along the greatness of which is beyond its own measure, a band that stands as a gateway to discovery. Miles Davis’s groups, the Yardbirds, the various incarnations of Acid Mothers Temple, all lead to multiple – and […]
The Gypsy Flies from Coast to Coast, by Mike Fiorito
Scott Sharrard has told me that he’s like the Yo-Yo Ma of Americana music. In other words, he’s playing music which is sadly slipping into history. He said that as many younger people drift away from roots music, music with traditions, they are often looking for music with a beat, music made on a laptop, music that sounds like a […]
Survivor story: Blake Sandberg’s ALIENS attempt second landing by Kurt Gottschalk
The t-shirt Blake Sandberg wears under his leather jacket speaks volumes. The iconic image — a line drawing of a mutant frog-thing with the caption bubble “HI, HOW ARE YOU” — is at least as famous as its creator, the troubled and sometimes revered singer/songwriter Daniel Johnston, who died in September at the age of 58, and the frog-thing’s question […]
Ragas Live and Anthony Braxton: jazz (maybe, definitely) at Pioneer Works and Columbia, by George Grella
What is jazz? The question isn’t philosophical, it’s practical—jazz is a practice. Jazz is just about 100 years old, with a give-or-take that depends on when your ears tell you musicians started playing it. The Original Dixieland Jass Band was the first group to record the music, in 1917, but they, and others, had been playing it for a considerable […]