NEWS & NOTES: Michael Cleveland Strengthens Flamekeeper Lineup by Adding Charlie Cushman
As good as they are, Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper is getting better with the addition to its lineup of Charlie Cushman, one of the most respected banjo players on the scene.

NEWS & NOTES: When The Moon Was Blue
By David McGee
MARY CLEERE HARAN, an exalted practitioner of the Great American Songbook, whose exquisite voice graced many a classic pop tune but especially favored and ennobled those of Lorenz Hart, died on February 5 in Deerfield Beach, FL. Two days earlier she had been struck by a car while bicycling and never regained consciousness. Ms. Haran emerged at the end of the golden age of cabaret in New York City, fittingly at one of the era’s foremost establishments, The Ballroom. She made an immediate impact as a classy, inventive stylist and a classy woman to boot, one who seemed thoroughly of her time in attitude but projected the style and sophistication of a more elegant time in American life. A remembrance of a singular presence among interpreters of timeless, transcendent pop music.