Author Archives: Neil Kurtzman
Prokofiev and Shostakovich – Masterworks 1
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 24th July 2026The program notes for the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra’s first Masterworks concert of the 2026-27 season (September 3) are below. The text that appears in the program may be modified from that which appears here. Tickets can be purchased online. The Composers and the Stalinist Regime Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich were the two greatest Soviet…
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Robots on the Loose
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd July 2026OpenAI reported that two of its artificial intelligence models broke out of a test environment, accessed the internet, and hacked Hugging Face. Hugging Face is a provider of open-source AI tools. Such an event is not supposed to be possible under the controls that are said to be imposed on AI systems. It brought back…
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Cyclospora in the Salad Bowl
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 18th July 2026The United States is experiencing an unusually large outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a prolonged diarrheal illness caused by the microscopic parasite Cyclospora cayetanensis. Although the disease is rarely fatal, it can produce weeks of watery diarrhea, fatigue, anorexia, abdominal distress, volume contraction, and weight loss. Its tendency to disappear briefly and then return makes it particularly…
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Naturalizing History – Book Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 15th July 2026Stephen Balch is a distinguished scholar and teacher. He has taught at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City and at Texas Tech University, where he was the director of the Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. He was also the founding president of the National Association of Scholars. He…
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LSO Concert Celebrating America’s 250th
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th July 2026A video of the second half of the Lubbock Symphony’s May 23, 2026 concert is below. The conductor is David Cho, the LSO’s music director.
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The AIs and I – We Answer the Same Question
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th July 2026I asked two AIs – ChatGPT and Gemini – the same question: In the pantheon of great Italian artists of all kinds, who are the four greatest? First, the answer I came up with and a brief reason for my choice. Here’s what ChatGPT said when asked the above question: (Notice the first person singular…
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Charles Craig – English tenor
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 7th July 2026Charles Craig was born in London on December 3, 1919, and died on January 23, 1997. He came from a large, unmusical family – he was the youngest of fifteen children. As a child, he was fond of the recordings of Enrico Caruso, though he didn’t consider a career as a singer. Craig worked in…
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July 4th and the Hazy Past
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 4th July 2026As the nation marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, I found myself musing on its 200th anniversary. My life has been long enough that I was a mature man when the bicentennial occurred. My wife and I were driving through the south of Germany on our way to Geneva with no schedule and no…
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Al Jolson
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 1st July 2026Al Jolson (1886-1950) was not merely the man who appeared in The Jazz Singer. He was one of the central figures in the creation of modern American popular entertainment. He was born Asa Yoelson in Lithuania, usually given as May 26, 1886, though the exact date is uncertain. His father, Moses Yoelson, was a rabbi…
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Why Socialism Has More Lives Than the Phoenix
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 26th June 2026Socialism, in its purest and most advanced form, is a political and economic system in which the means of production and the distribution of goods and services are owned, controlled, or directed by the government. In one form or another, it has been around for more than two centuries. It eventually disappears or degenerates into…
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