A Coming Together of Body and Soul

The Rivertowns are a hotbed of dancers.  I have that from a reliable source. Maxine Sherman, a former principal dancer with Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater and Martha Graham Dance Company told me so…and she should know.  With the drop of a tiara, Maxine can reel off the names of dozens of well known ballet […]

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A Feast of Arts this Weekend

What a weekend there is coming up. It’s a veritable feast of arts happening in the county. Every Tuesday morning at 8:20am, I get on the phone with T.J.McCormack at WVOX (1460AM) for a five minute chat about the arts. There was so much on the docket for this weekend that I couldn’t get it […]

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In Defense of “Hanging Out”

I never ran the Boston Marathon, but when I moved there years ago to lead the Boston Center for the Arts, I went to every one of them. Marathon Mondays, First Nights on New Years Eve and the concerts on the Commons. These events (and the Red Sox) were the Boston way of life. So […]

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Two Things I Learned From Koch

I can’t wait to see the movie “Koch” not just because he was a colorful Mayor. But, let’s just say, I knew the man. He was my boss, so to speak. Some time ago…actually a long time ago in the late seventies, I was Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York City when Koch […]

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Singing Her Heart Out

Christine Andreas is Westchester’s “Fair Lady” having appeared in many Broadway revivals including “My Fair Lady,” “On Your Toes” and “Oklahoma.” This Tony-awardee is bringing her  newly arranged cabaret show “Bemused” to a Westchester Community College soiree on April 17th at Tappan Hill.  It’s all about raising funds for need-based scholarships to give deserving students of […]

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Literacy Gone Visual

Literacy Gone Visual

As a child, I remember being so inconsolable watching the wicked queen poison Snow White, that I actually ran out of the movie theater. Steve Apkon would no doubt say: “It was the power of the image.” Apkon, Founder of the Jacob Burns Film Center, explores visual literacy in his book, The Age of the […]

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Heroes of Hurricane Sandy

When people ask where I’m from, I most often say, “I’m just a kid from the Rockaway’s.” This used to evoke a querulous “Where?” But no longer. Unfortunately, the Rockaway’s are recently famous, but not for the charm and fun I knew riding my bike on the boardwalk on a brisk winter’s day from Beach […]

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Nature is Art

Beauty, we are told, is in the eye of the beholder. So for some beauty is a sunset.  For others, it’s a sports car or a diamond.  For Robert Wiener, Chairman of Maxx Properties and ArtsWestchester board member, beauty is a geode.  For more than 40 years, Wiener has been collecting geodes, some 2,000 of […]

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