Conversations With Mary

The works on pianist Mary Kathleen Ernst’s Keeping Time span a broad swath of years, from Jing Jing Luo’s “Mosquito” (1991) to Stefania de Kenessey’s “Spontaneous D-Combustion” (2012). But at the album’s heart lies a through-line that, in Ernst’s own words, “celebrates the timelessness of friendship and the ways in which great music binds us together.” ...The styles on display are wide-ranging, encompassing jazz, neo-classical, post-modern and serial, and Ernst ... is sterling throughout.

Improve your biblical literacy and re-encounter the New Testament as a great repository of literary genius. This is the promise of Professor Amy-Jill Levine's vivid portraits of the cast of characters in the New Testament. While most of the figures treated are real, historical people, at least two (the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan) are fictional protagonists in stories told by Jesus within Luke's Gospel.