Stories by Marc Eisen

I love music, but seem to have about a 30-word vocabulary to describe it. This is the fifth time I’ve compiled my favorite concerts for TheDailyPage.com. Make of it what you want. I consider it a writerly exercise and a homage to artists who made my life richer.

Here’s what I wrote in past years:

2009

2008

2007

2006

Here’s how the 2010 piece begins:

The last time I saw actor Jeff Daniels was in fall 2009 on Broadway with James Gandolfini, Hope Davis and Marcia Gay Harden in an all-star staging of the London hit God of Carnage. Now he was in Stoughton, of all places.

Yep, Daniels was performing a witty one-man show in little ol’ Stoughton (Nov. 13), singing his own songs, playing surprisingly strong blues guitar and telling stories about Clint Eastwood, Hollywood and a yen to drive a motor home.

Chalk it up to one in a series of booking coups by the best venue of 2010 (in my opinion), the 475-seat Stoughton Opera House. I saw stellar jazz, country, blues and classical music in the beautifully restored hall, which occupies the third floor of the historic Stoughton City Hall.

I didn’t see a hipper show last year, for example, than jazz phenom Esperanza Spalding’s stop (Sept. 19). The audience might as well have been transported to a little club on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village.

To read more, please go here.