Fans of Bret Easton Ellis (1964) had to wait thirteen years for his latest novel The Shards. After a powerful beginning, the penultimate novels by the American author collapsed after a few chapters, so expectations were not that high anymore. Like in his debut Less Than Zero, Ellis returns in The Shards to his high […]
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Mehldau touches strings of a higher order
When Brad Mehldau starts a song by Lennon & McCartney during one of his sets, a sigh of recognition goes through the room. During the American pianist’s improvisations on the music of the Beatles, you never cease to be amazed by the timeless beauty of ‘And I Love Her’, ‘Blackbird’ and ‘Here, There and Everywhere’. […]
Obituary Paul Smit (1948 – 2022)
Between Christmas and New Year, I receive a WhatsApp message from my former publisher Rob Kemper. ‘Have you heard that Paul Smit has died?’ No, I haven’t. Paul Smit was seventy-four. He hosted my website and the contact we had in recent years was mainly via e-mail. Paul preferred calling, but as soon he had […]
Marcel Proust’s eternal present
One hundred years after Marcel Proust’s death (18 November 1922), À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) is one of the best-known literary works. As a genre, Proust’s life’s work can hardly be classified. It is an autobiography, a psychological novel, a series of philosophical essays and a comedy of manners […]
Rockit Festival 2022
Even for a modest act like the Bill Frisell quartet, enthusiasm is high at the Rockit Festival at Groningen’s Oosterpoort. Last year, this one-day Northern version of North Sea Jazz was cancelled at the last minute because of Covid. This must be the reason for the audience’s exuberance. Singer Petra Haden, cellist Hank Roberts and […]
100 years The Waste Land
100 years ago (15 October 1922) T.S. Eliot published his poem The Waste Land. Suddenly, everything written before that day seemed old-fashioned. The versatile, talented, original and self-willed poet, (drama) writer, critic and publisher was born in Saint Louis, Missouri (US). In 1914, he received a scholarship to study at Oxford. There, Eliot felt so […]