Paul Wilner
Paul Wilner is a longstanding arts and entertainment writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Arts & Leisure section, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, The Monterey County Weekly, and other publications.
Articles by this Author
Randy Newman is an anomaly. After starting out in the singer/songwriter category that could easily turn into a career death trap, he has consistently reinvented the wheel.
Emanuel Ax is not just one of the finest classical music pianists of our (or any) time, he’s also a mensch — as gracious to talk to as he is inspiring to hear. The Polish-born, Canadian-raised virtuoso, whose most recent Sony recording, Mendelssohn Piano Trios, was a collaboration with his close friends and frequent collaborators Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, comes to the Bay Area Jan.
Musicians, like other species, mutate and adapt to survive — or, in the case of groups like the pioneering Bay Area–based Turtle Island String Quartet, simply because doing so captivates them and stirs the juices that got them going in the first place. Oh, yeah: Adding some screaming licks based on the most celebrated psychedelic-era musician of all time never hurts, either.
Unlike Bart Simpson, Mark O’Connor is an overachiever, and proud of it, though in a soft-spoken, disarmingly modest way.
