He's been at the forefront of contemporary music and conducting for more than half a century. Marking his 85th birthday this spring, a number of new Boulez CDs and DVDs have been released. Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews three of the latest.
Time has run out for special agent Jack Bauer, the hero of Fox's real-time drama, 24. Executive Producer Howard Gordon reflects on the past eight seasons -- explaining how the show became more politicized and why Jack Bauer never once went to the bathroom.
Director Laura Poitras set out to make a documentary that followed a prisoner released from Guantanamo Bay. But her movie about Salim Hamdan became more complicated when she met Hamdan's brother-in-law Abu Jandal, an enigmatic man and Osama bin Laden's former bodyguard. David Edelstein says the film is a fine one, full of "haunting ambiguities."
For 20 years, the Rev. Gregory Boyle has run Homeboy Industries, an anti-gang program that employs and is run by ex-gang members in Los Angeles. Boyle recently had to lay off most of his staff because of financial problems. He recounts the decades he's helped ex-gang members turn their lives around in a new memoir, Tattoos on the Heart.
A regular performer at the Village Vanguard, Anat Cohen paid tribute to her early clarinet hero Benny Goodman in 2009, in honor of his 100th birthday. On Clarinetwork, her quartet plays tunes associated with Goodman, or at least songs he recorded while backing Billie Holiday.
Dominique Browning ran the magazine House & Garden until it folded in 2007. Her new memoir, Slow Love, reveals how Browning refocused her life by baking, playing the piano and wearing pajamas all day.
After journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained in North Korea in 2009, Laura's sister, fellow journalist Lisa Ling, worked tirelessly to bring them home. In a conversation with contributor Dave Davies, the sisters detail the incident that ended with former President Bill Clinton bringing them home.
Once seen as a moderate Islamic cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki is now a jihadist hiding in Yemen, regarded as so dangerous that he reportedly is being targeted to be killed by the CIA. New York Times reporter Scott Shane explains how the American-born cleric has inspired attacks, including the recent Times Square car bombing attempt.
Critic Ken Tucker reviews What We Lose in the Fire We Gain in the Flood, the debut album from a new band called The Mynabirds. The group is led by singer-songwriter Laura Burhenn, whose influences range from Dusty Springfield and Carole King to Carl Jung and Sufi poetry.
More than 85 million bottles of water are sold every day in the United States. Freshwater expert Peter Gleick explains what's in them -- and why we drink them -- in the book Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water.
The pianist, a member of one of the most remarkable families in jazz history, died Sunday. He was 91. Fresh Air remembers the jazz legend with highlights from an interview conducted in 2005.
Rodrigo Garcia's film Mother and Child is his most formally daring, says critic David Edelstein. Starring Annette Bening, Kerry Washington and Naomi Watts, the film centers around the bonds between a birth mother and her children, even after that child is placed up for adoption.
In a transitional period between different groups with Miles Davis and Anthony Braxton and his fusion band, Return to Forever, Chick Corea recorded a series of solo piano improvisations in 1971. Those recordings and a 1983 follow-up have been reissued in a three-CD box set.
Writer John Seabrook was in the process of adopting a baby girl from Haitin when the country was hit by the massive earthquake in January. He writes about his own experience with international adoption -- and the history and perils of the practice -- in The New Yorker.
Doug Glanville is a former major league baseball player with an engineering degree from an Ivy League school who writes about baseball for The New York Times. Glanville's new book, The Game From Where I Stand, is an insider's look at the world of professional sports.
Filmmaker Rodrigo Garcia never intended to write and direct movies: He wanted to stay behind the camera. Garcia explains how he got the idea for the drama Mother and Child and details what it was like growing p as the son of novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Omar Khadr has been held at Guantanamo Bay for eight years. He is accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan at age 15. A pretrial hearing for Khadr started last month, and journalist Spencer Ackerman says it's likely to indicate whether President Obama's changes to the military commissions are substantive or simply cosmetic.
The release of a new collection of Jimmy Donley songs, The Shape You Left Me In, suggests that there was more to Donley than his tormented biography indicates. Critic Ed Ward explains.
Drinking didn't stop in the United States from 1920 to 1933 -- it just went underground. Author Daniel Okrent discusses the lasting cultural and political impact of Prohibition in his new book, Last Call.
Dorothy Sayers' genteelly dapper detective, portrayed by Ian Carmichael in the '70s BBC miniseries, returns in a newly released DVD set. Critic John Powers reviews the first two episodes of a murder-mystery collection whose success on American TV paved the way for a PBS's popular Mystery franchise.
