Newsletter

A collection of 163 posts

Newsletter

Robins, Daffodils, and Printemps

Astronomically, spring has arrived. On the same day, the French department store chain Printemps (French for ‘spring’) opened a branch on Broadway in Lower Manhattan. The store is gorgeous (see photos below). The interior is inspired by the art deco style of One Wall Street, the super luxury apartment turned

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What Happens in Austin?

Last weekend, SXSW wrapped in Austin, TX. We were not there physically, but we could get a sense of the spirit through the posts of musicians we already know and those we met last week at the New Colossus Festival. Everybody seemed to have a blast, so the news that

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A Feast in Orange

Twenty years ago, we celebrated The Gates at Central Park. This massive installation by the late artist couple Christo and Jean-Claude was a celebration and a welcomed and celebrated boost in post-September 11 New York. In 2005, many of our friends from different corners of the world traveled to the

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Real and Immediate

The New Colossus Festival is in full swing on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It started on Tuesday, but the best is yet to come, including a massive all-day Sunday lineup. If you are in NYC, consider going! Daytime shows are free, so you can enjoy lots of music without

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Savor the Moment

On our first morning in Lisbon, we bought bread from a bakery across the street. They had a small table with two chairs next to the door to enjoy a casual coffee. When we entered the shop, a young woman sat there, eating a snack of pasteis sabores, little cakes

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Music for Hope

Elke and I went for a walk to the World Trade Center this Monday to shop, so we experienced the Sing For Hope Piano, which happens every Monday and Thursday. I often commute through this space, so I’m familiar with it, but for Elke, it was the first time.

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Great and Little Escapes

The Great Escape in Brighton has released another batch of 100 performing artists, and – no surprise – we know only a few artists and are seriously excited about Hachiku. This means we need to devote some listening time to our festival preparation. To get this started, we also include some discoveries

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The Music Never Ends

On the second weekend, after we moved to New York City, we went to Greenwich Village with a bunch of new friends to visit the jazz club Smalls. Of course, it was packed, and we did not get in. The same happened in other venues around Bleecker Street, so we

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The Copacabana, a Tea Commercials and Sunsets over the Hudson

For the last eight years, we have used Sonos to play sound and music in our home. If you are not familiar with Sonos, it is a wireless speaker system that allows you to select music through a proprietary app on a streaming service of your choosing. Last year, Sonos

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Don’t Make This Mistake

Greetings from icy New York City! It looks like we are up for a cold winter, so we decided to take a break from it come mid-February. We had a few options where it is reasonably warm at this time of year, and in the end, Lisbon appealed to us

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January Notes

Every January, we wish the best for a new year, but the devastating fires in LA have put a severe dent into those hopes. We associate fires that destroy large parts of a major city with distant history, like after the earthquakes in Lisbon in 1755 or San Francisco in

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Break the Bubble

We spent New Year’s Day in Cold Spring, NY, a small village about an hour and a half by train from the city. There, we headed to Little Stony Point for some casual birdwatching – nothing makes you appreciate the beauty of the world more than little songbirds fluttering around

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Let’s Make it a Good One

Happy New Year! Today’s newsletter reaches you with a slight delay because we were off for two days in Peekskill, NY, to celebrate New Year’s Eve. There is nothing grand to report from there: pouring rain quelled pretty much all outdoor revelry on the big evening. But that

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That’s a Wrap!

Here we go: the last glamglare newsletter of the year! Five more days, and we wrap another 365 Song Pick of the Day features for 2024. We will celebrate this by playing our full playlist over the next few days. You can join us on YouTube or Spotify for over

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Home for the Holidays

We are back from our weeklong trip to Germany. It is wonderful and exciting to see family and friends in person, but we are also happy to have returned to the place that has been our home for over two decades. Enjoy some photos of a festive Munich at the

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Winter Wonderland

We arrived yesterday in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, after a long flight via Reykjavík to Munich. We had to take the bus from the airport due to train track maintenance. It is winter here, cold and snowy – perfect for a Christmas break. Even though neither Elke’s dad nor my mother lives

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A Christmas Treat

During the holiday season, lists of the year’s best albums used to pop up everywhere. This has become a bit muted lately. I don’t know if this has to do with the fact that musical tastes are generally more spread out or if there is a bland consensus

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Thank you for the Music (2024 Version)

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the US, and a very happy start into the holiday season, which I believe is pretty global by now. I already used the newsletter title “Thank you for the music” last year, but it is even more fitting today. We will see an ABBA tribute

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Of Grey and Blue Skies

We are under a draught warning here in New York City, so we cannot enjoy the endless row of gorgeous fall days as much as we should. When it finally started raining this week, we were happy to see water drops on the windows and the wet terrace floor reflecting

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Go See a Show

The renowned music industry blogger Bob Lefsetz wrote a piece “Let The Clubs Close” about the futility of saving small live music clubs. In his opinion, nobody wants to see new, undeveloped acts live anyway on small stages, so why bother? People discover music online and then go to see

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And the Beat Goes On

In the U.S., we are still processing Tuesday’s election results, so it is extremely difficult to go back to talking about music and the good sides of life. But especially in times like these, it is essential to keep a larger perspective and to not let yourself be

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Light and Darkness

Happy Halloween! It is a sunny and warm day here in NYC, so it should be fun for everybody who celebrates. We follow it only mildly, mainly by enjoying the decorations around us, which are not so numerous in the city, putting a few spooky items into our place, and

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A Star Spangled Day

Yesterday, Elke was finally sworn in as a U.S. citizen after living for more than 23 years in the country. What took her so long? Well, these things are never easy, and the path became only fully clear when Germany modernized its citizenship laws at the end of June

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Legend for a Moment

When Elke and I talk about old music favorites, the Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW) always comes up. This was an exciting moment in German music when local bands with German lyrics adopted new wave and post-punk from Britain. Before that, the 60s and 70s-style Schlager Musik (Hit Music) ruled the

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The Great Escape

It is October, and we are closing in on the first SXSW Music announcement. From 2013 to 2019, this was a major cause for excitement for us: the moment when our days at the festival began taking shape. In 2020, the pandemic ended our SXSW streak. But while I would