Music of the late Yvar Mikhashoff is being remembered. Fitfully and occasionally. But those who knew Yvar are surely grateful. And based on the stunning performance by Winston Choi in this new CD on Albany Records there are also new generations finding beauty and power in the music. Let me admit that I enjoyed the notes by Nils Vigeland, Yvar’s former student, a pianist and a director of the Mikahshoff Trust, as much...

In the bio-pic “Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell,” Allen Ginsberg describes Russell as a poet who sings.  I like that because it puts a finger on why I’ve never connected well with Russell’s music. Lord knows I’ve tried many times, always hoping to sink into the numerous posthumous collections of his music that have come out in recent years.  His songs and instrumentals always feel like sketches to...

TROY — The blazing technique of Stephen Hough can almost obscure his brilliant intelligence. But the British pianist’s ample gifts came together beautifully throughout his Sunday afternoon recital at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. It was Hough’s third appearance under the aegis of the Troy Chromatics. Besides an acclaimed virtuoso, Hough is something of a scholar, offering his own program notes and a well received pre-concert...

In 1988, accordionist and composer Pauline Oliveros made a recording with a trombone player and a percussionist inside a 2 million-gallon empty cistern buried 14 feet below ground at Fort Worden, near Port Townsend, Wash. The resulting CD on New Albion Records was titled “Deep Listening,” a play on the unusual location and also an apt description of the trio’s meditative and reverberant improvisations. Soon...

His husband. Her wife. The coupling of these words may cause your tongue to stumble, but for many people in committed gay or lesbian relationships, the terms are longed-for alternatives to euphemisms like partner, companion or lover. Yet there’s far more at stake in the cause of same-sex marriage than just better terminology. Filmmaker and Troy native Jim de Seve, whose documentary “Tying the Knot” opens...

It was in the basement of a Seattle church in the early 1970s that Pleasant DeSpain knew for sure his commitment to becoming a professional storyteller was going to work out. “I had my hat by the door, and I told stories for two hours,” he says. “At the end of that night, there was $27.68 in that hat. And rent for a decent apartment was $100 back then. I knew then that there was no turning back.” DeSpain has been telling...

Imagine a music that is created more by listening than by playing notes. The sounds are determined by the time and place in which the musicians gather, and the players are guided not so much by a score but by their heightened sensitivities to each other, their environment and their common values of collaboration. Such is the sonic universe of Pauline Oliveros, a 70-year-old composer and accordionist, internationally known...