John Schaefer

Music therapy sounds like such a great idea. And it actually seems plausible too – we’ve all noticed how a favorite song coming on the radio can be a real mood-lifter. So the idea of music having some kind of physical and/or psychological benefit seems quite rational. But it also ...

Dana Jennings’ story of how country music was so important to the lives of the people growing up poor in his New Hampshire hometown got me to thinking. Growing up in New York City, what did I know about country music? Very little, and that was the way I liked ...

The idea of hearing an Art Tatum performance live, half a century after Tatum himself died, is certainly intriguing. You listen to those recordings of his from the 40s, and it’s clear that he was one of the greatest virtuosos of the instrument this country has ever produced. But that’s ...

Pardon me while I date myself, but when I began making cassette mixtapes, in the 80s, I don’t think anyone was using the term “mixtape” yet. But I owned a cheap stereo with a cassette deck, was recently married, and incurable romantic that I ...

On the surface, classical music and hip-hop seem like the strangest of musical bedfellows. If you think about it, though, the best hip-hop producers are master orchestrators – but instead of using keeping Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Principles of Orchestration” handy they’ve got ProTools (the industry standard for digital audio programs) loaded on ...

Ah, the cell phone. What an amazing little gadget: it plays music videos, records brief movies, takes and shares photos, sends and receives instant messages, and I think you can talk into them too. Has any other device connected us so efficiently? Has any other device set concertgoers at each ...

Here's what bugs me about Broadway - well, aside from the ticket prices: you have a somewhat edgy, idiosyncratic musical like 'Passing Strange' (the brainchild of musician Stew, pictured) actually trying to do something different and getting a great amount of critical ...

Jim Farber’s column in the Daily News points out the success of a new generation of black rockers in bands like TV On The Radio and Gnarls Barkley. Stew, the singer/guitarist behind the smash rock musical ...

For an arts organization to survive today, it has to take risks. Gerard Mortier (pictured at right), who takes over the New York City Opera in 2009, knows about taking risks. And he knows that when you roll the dice, you ...

New York in the '70s was an amazing place to grow up, especially if you were into music. I was heavily into the punk scene, but because I rode the J train every day through Bushwick, East New York, and pre-hipster Williamsburg, I also heard the emerging sounds of rap. ...

It’s one thing for Lil Wayne to proclaim himself the world’s best rapper. That sort of bragging, whether serious or in jest, has long been a part of hip-hop. It’s quite another thing for anyone else to agree. I mean, hip-hop ...

It is possible in a world of blogs, MySpace pages, and instant music or video delivery to be wildly popular in a very small circle. You can have a ...

I’m more of a beer guy than a wine aficionado. I’m not so sure my feelings about an India Pale Ale will be altered by the music I’m hearing, but on the other hand, I can’t dismiss the idea either. Adrian North’s ...

What do you ask someone who’s so famous that he has his own Muppet? Placido Domingo is one of the greatest tenors of our time, and as a conductor and arts administrator he has been a tireless champion of the world of ...

I loved the original Star Trek. But all the juvenile hero-worship in the world couldn’t save Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock from the guffaws that followed when they each released albums of “covers” (a charitable term, in this case) of popular songs in the late 60s. Universal derision hasn’t stopped ...

This week's Soundcheck Smackdown is a curious one, at least to me - because I can see how both sides of the argument could be correct. Maybe you believe in climate change, maybe you don't. (Watch out for the edge of our flat planet, though.) But it is certainly possible ...

I went to a college, Fordham, that didn’t have an a cappella group, at least not as far as I know. This was on the border of the South Bronx in the late 70s, and it wasn’t the sort of place you’d expect to find an a cappella group, unless ...

How did Blender do it? How did they start compiling a list of music’s creepiest, most repulsive, often genuinely criminal people – and stop at just 25? I don’t know what it is about the music biz, but it has long been a magnet for shady characters. I suppose ...

I’ve never understood the whole tribute band thing. I also never understood the people who reenact Civil War battles, so maybe this is a blind spot of some sort… But to do someone else’s songs night after night, aping the sound of the original band, and sometimes even trying to ...

Record stores are great. If you already know what you like and what you’re looking for. Otherwise, buying music online has a huge advantage. Old-timers talk about walking into their local record shop and being intrigued by an album cover and asking the guy behind the counter to play a ...