One of the great privileges of my life is to play regularly with the outlandishly talented singer Catherine Brookman in the Greenpoint Reformed Church band. Her beautifully layered new album, out today, gives you a chance to hear why I’m so fortunate. #dailyalbum open.spotify.com/album/2dd0Zy...

Still processing the kaleidoscopic genius of Rosalía's new record, but on first listen my ears perked up at this sweetly tuneful, Gaby Moreno-esque waltz (backed by the sierreño trio Yahritza y Su Esencia), which happens to deliver a bitterly sarcastic kiss-off to an ex. #dailysong

A List of Things Said to Have Been Ruined by Women 🧵

Been spinning this lively, boisterous Kodály suite for the past few days. I love its manic high points, of course, but I also key into the lush cimbalom passages in movement III. The wild moments hit even harder by contrast with the lyrical flights. #dailyalbum open.spotify.com/album/46sRi9...

This breathtaking Arooj Aftab piece came up on shuffle this morning, and despite its length I didn't think once about skipping. The interweaving of her delicate voice and Maeve Gilchrist's harp is positively soul-suspending. #dailysong www.youtube.com/watch?v=udgz...

Love this conversation about criticism between Wesley Morris and Kelefa Sanneh. It’s chiefly about music criticism but so many of its insights resonate for theater criticism as well

Laurie Metcalf and Sam Hunter are such an ideal match on paper, I half worried that, in working together, they would somehow cancel each other out. My fears were misplaced: LITTLE BEAR RIDGE ROAD is an exquisitely rendered piece of observational drama with a startling undercurrent of rage.

Diep, crushing it as usual

Feels like a good day to revisit Lou Reed's love/hate letter to the city I'm happy to call home. His unique blend of deadpan street poetry and rock grit always gives me a lift, and this record's added layer of civic crankery also hits the spot. #dailyalbum open.spotify.com/album/7xGqf9...

Wordless Wednesday:

Feeling this Ace Frehley classic today, Bo Diddley beat, stomping chorus, and all. (Fun fact: It's a cover of a song by a Brit, Russ Ballard, who wrote it as an ode to the Big Apple.) #dailysong youtu.be/DXeeY9D9u94

The obsessive wokeness panic is about elite labor market competition and prestige. People use a lot of fancy words to obscure this, and offer some substantive criticisms as well, but that’s ultimately its driving force.

From Berlioz to The Last Dinner Party, Rosalía to Red Sovine, last week's Music Diary is up

You don't hear a preview of all that Janelle Monáe would go on to do on this 2007 EP—it doesn't even tease all the styles on her stunning full-length follow-up, THE ARCHANDROID—but it's remarkable how fearlessly eclectic and rangy she was from the jump. #dailyalbum open.spotify.com/album/3T3bJi...

I know Diane Ladd had an incredible body of work, but as a long time eterna-stan of Enlightened, on that show, she took a character that could have been a caricature & worked subtle wonders ... anyway watch Enlightened 💚https://www.tvguide.com/news/features/enlightened-laura-dern-hbo/?ref=moryan.com

This twee sunburst of a tune was the B-side of Styx’s “Renegade,” a 45 I cherished in 1978. Hearing its flute-y synth and 6/8 strum again today takes me back, with some affection, to my 10-year-old brain full of Tolkien, Star Wars, and AM radio. #dailysong youtu.be/aglWbPkl-QM

...has endorsed Andrew Cuomo.

Lovely piece by @alissawilkinson.bsky.social on a theme dear to me—the convergence of/affinities between church and theater—as exemplified by a spate of recent and current shows. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/03/t...

Is this lilting, infectious Lila Downs jam simply a mole recipe set to music? Basically, and a tastier blend of cumbia and norteña you are unlikely to find. #dailysong youtu.be/xtFlBWt864c

always a fave

I somehow missed this 2011 @kdlang.bsky.social record entirely. It's a gratifying half-return to her early Americana sound, which I prefer to her pop era, mostly originals plus brisk covers of Talking Heads' "Heaven" and Little River Band's "Reminiscing." #dailyalbum open.spotify.com/album/4zlEhr...

Wow if only there was a book that explained what Method acting is, where it came from, and how it both reflected and transformed 20th century America. variety.com/2025/film/ne...

Only the title track of this gorgeous Juri Seo record refers to breathing, but the whole thing is suffused with light, air, and the rhythms of breath—she has an uncanny ability to make stringed instruments sound like teeming, living nature. #dailyalbum open.spotify.com/album/5v6ffu...

Opened this morning’s service at Greenpoint Reformed Church with this sunny Glen Campbell tune, the modesty and simplicity of which is a perfect vehicle for its self-effacing sentiment. It puts a spring in your step even as it counsels humility—a kind of magic trick. #dailysong youtu.be/ibbfExJBNC8

It’s not just the tasty polytonality of this Copland piece, rendered in this utterly convincing jazz-rock style by Bill Frisell and his band, that endears it to me—but that’s a lot of it. The wrenching gear shift back to the original key at 1:34 is a moment I always wait for. #dailysong

Best known for the ebullient pop ode “Ariel,” Dean Friedman’s entire 1977 debut record is worth a spin for its witty, crafty blend blend of pop, folk, and jazz. (Ben Folds clearly took notes.) Don’t sleep on the great ballads “Solitaire” and “Humor Me.” #dailyalbum open.spotify.com/album/6jOJAR...

How did Cyndi Lauper and Theresa Rebeck turn ‘Working Girl' into a musical (at La Jolla through Nov. 30)? By focusing on the absurdities of 1980s work culture and continuing inequalities. 

For Halloween I'm spinning this obsessive Berlioz classic (let's face it, mainly for its infernal conclusion), and gifting you with this important thought: How original was this composer? Why, he Berlioz anything to other musicians. #dailyalbum open.spotify.com/album/3mWzHN...

Just in time for Halloween, the great Eleni Mandell has released a delicious new minor-key tale of suburban horror about a murder of crows plotting revenge on destructive home builders. Spooktastic. #dailysong www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tufg...

Commitment to the bit has seldom paid off as it does with BAT BOY, a musical spun from tabloid fiction and embroidered with hoary horror and musical theatre tropes, thoroughgoing irreverence, witty craft, and a sneaky dash of sincerity. If that's your jam, the new Encores revival is worth your time.

Even winning this year’s Halloween costume prize couldn’t ease Carol’s existential ennui. “Another October, another ghost, another shiny prize. Maybe a pig’s ear would cheer me. Ah nuts, who am I kidding.”

We made a veggie plate!

#tbt Our 2022 interview with Suzan-Lori Parks, in which she gave this amazing answer. www.americantheatre.org/2022/10/18/s...

Absolutely ICONIC that @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social went on Track Star and ... did not recognize Billy Joel. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmqL...

lmao david byrne showed the video of the ice agents tripping over themselves while trying to run after a biker on wacker drive during the “life during wartime” segment of his chicago show tonight

You didn’t hear this from us, but the Old English word 'sibb' meant “related by blood.” This is where we get the 'sibling.' And 'godsibb' essentially meant “godparent.” Over time, it came to mean "close friend." Now it is something we share w/ close friends... 'gossip.'

I use Claude (an AI) to scan my posts for spelling and grammar errors. On the most recent post (about the East Wing, link below), I got a really amazing addendum. www.pbump.net/o/yes-most-a...

They should make a movie where the world is overrun by vampires and Gilroy has the only survivors because of the garlic.

“ArtRX isn’t just about performances; it’s about building meaningful connections that support healing for both patients and caregivers.” -Summer Plitzkow, Naples Players’ director of arts access

Revisiting The Police's best-sounding record and marveling anew at how their ace playing makes even the bad songs sound fresh and the great ones better than they need to be. Still my fave track: the two-tempo jam "Deathwish," which Andy Summers owns. #dailyalbum open.spotify.com/album/2EpuND...

The opening of Rosalía's new single is giving Yma Sumac singing Carl Orff, before calming down into Björk-esque chamber pop. Then Björk herself shows up to warble and Yves Tumor seals it with a startling threat. It's a lot. #dailysong www.youtube.com/watch?v=htQB...

Is social media dying? How much has Twitter changed as it became X? Which party now dominates the conversation? Using nationally representative ANES data from 2020 & 2024, I map how the U.S. social media landscape has transformed. Here are the key take-aways 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2510.25417

Today I happily discovered the music of Alfredo Nepomuceno via this lovely 2019 record. His symphony has sweeping strings and sobbing winds that put me in mind of Tchaikovsky, and his variations on Brazilian themes have an undeniable spark. #dailyalbum open.spotify.com/album/6VZDta...

i think if you ride public transit enough you learn that most weird behavior is not dangerous, and conversely i think driving a car teaches you that everyone is trying to kill you at all times

Liberation’s Broadway run is sadly short—you’ve got 12 weeks!—but I really hope it lives forever in repertory. I would love to see a production in every town.

“The most important revelation I have gleaned from Watkins’s lackluster is this: His life and career reveal how he and other middling professionals advanced themselves despite their ‘white mediocrity,’ to employ Koritha Mitchell's phrase.” -Amy E. Hughes www.americantheatre.org/2025/10/28/t...

The intrepid Stuart Miller threaded a difficult needle in writing this piece—it's a very complicated issue, and a bit of a moving target. I think it turned out great.

Folks have understandably focused on the granularly intimate lyrics of Lily Allen's new roman à clef. As for me, I've been tripping on the music: the wild chorus modulation on "Tennis," for one, and the nauseous microtone she uses relentlessly on this woozy waltz (1st on the word "stop"). #dailysong