A Note on Hilary Mantel's "Beyond Black"

I first heard about Beyond Black from "A Good Read podcast," where two of the guests didn't like the book, With all the great criticism accrued to Mantel in recent years, my curiosity was piqued. Here's my very short take from Goodreads:

Starts off like a house on fire, but slows up in the middle, comes back with an exciting ending. Putting together an over weight psychic and her rail thin officious aide, mistaken for a lesbian couple trying to come to terms with a variety of evil spirits, is something quite different for the author of "Wolf Hall."

Brooklyn Dreaming From Flautist Lori Bell

This article was first published at Blogcritics

Thomas Wolfe may have been wrong when he wrote You Can’t Go Home Again, if flautist Lori Bell’s latest album Brooklyn Dreaming is any indication. Fronting a quartet featuring Tamir Hendelman on piano, Katie Thiroux on bass and Matt Witek on drums, the West Coast transplant takes the opportunity of her ninth studio album to put together a nine-track musical return to her roots in Brooklyn and Manhattan (since six of the tunes reference New York City). Home is where the music comes from.

Although the album’s main focus is on original Bell compositions, she begins with a swinging version of the Charles Mingus classic “Nostalgia in Times Square”—note the appropriate emphasis on nostalgia to set the thematic tone. The other covers are a brilliant romp through Monk’s “52^nd Street Theme” and Earle Hagen’s “Harlem Nocturne” which closes the set. This last providing a bit of personal nostalgia recalling the rock and roll blues version of Sam “The Man” Taylor, a favorite of my own youth in Brooklyn, here treated with a Latin beat and some elegant solo work from Bell and Hendelman.   It is tough competing with youthful memories of Alan Freed and the Brooklyn Paramount, but Bell and her quartet manage quite well.

The original material includes an inspired almost mystical “Times Squared” with a dynamic conversation between Bell and Hendelman and a smoky “Streets of New York.” The title song with its dreamlike melody re-enforces the nostalgic theme, while “A Dog on Coney,” a real jazz romp, changes the mood entirely. “Lower Manhattan” and “3 Deuce Blues,” with a wispy opening leading inevitably to the blues in its title, round out the album.

The Lori Bell Quartet is an ensemble that demands attention. These are four top notch musicians who work as one. Bell has a vision, and Hendelman, Thiroux and Witek buy into that vision with gusto. Their collaboration has produced an album that is both beautiful and intelligent. Brooklyn Dreaming is a winner.