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ABOUT "ABOUT LAST NIGHT" AND ITS AUTHORS 
This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout, Laura Demanski (otherwise known as Our Girl in Chicago, or "OGIC" for short), and Carrie Frye (who signs her postings "CAAF"). Terry, who lives in New York, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the chief culture critic of Commentary. His Wikipedia entry is here. more

ABOUT TERRY'S BOOKS 
Terry's latest book is Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the U.S., JR Books in England, Larousse in Brazil, and United Press/Alpina in Russia. He is currently at work on Mood Indigo: A Life of Duke Ellington. He wrote the introductions to William Bailey on Canvas and the paperback editions of Richard Stark's Flashfire and Firebreak and Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado. One of his essays is included in Robert Gottlieb's Reading Dance, and he contributed notes on recordings by Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa, and Oscar Peterson to Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology. more

MORE ABOUT "POPS" 
To read reviews of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, watch TV interviews and listen to radio interviews and podcasts about the book, and find out the answers to frequently asked questions about Armstrong and Pops, click on the link. more

ABOUT TERRY'S PLAY AND OPERA LIBRETTI 
Terry's first play, Satchmo at the Waldorf, was premiered on September 15, 2011, at Orlando Shakespeare's Mandell Theatre in Orlando, Florida. It will be produced in August of 2012 by Shakespeare & Company of Lenox, Mass., with John Douglas Thompson playing the dual role of Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser. To read more about Satchmo at the Waldorf, go here. To read an excerpt, go here.

Terry collaborated with Paul Moravec on Danse Russe, a backstage comedy about the making of The Rite of Spring that was premiered by Philadelphia's Center City Opera Theater on April 28, 2011. To read more about Danse Russe, go here and here. To view excerpts from the opera and see Paul and Terry talk about its creation, go here.

Terry previously collaborated with Paul on The Letter, an operatic version of Somerset Maugham's 1927 play that was commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera in 2006 and opened there on July 25, 2009. To see excerpts from the opera, go here. To read Terry's reports on the writing, production, premiere, and reception of The Letter, click on the link. more

TERRY'S TWITTERS 

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CONTACT
tteachout@artsjournal.com
ogic@artsjournal.com
caaf@artsjournal.com

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TOP FIVE

A list of new things we've liked (subject to unexpected and wildly capricious updating).

GALLERY 
Weegee: Naked City (Steven Kasher, 521 W. 23, up through Feb. 25). A compact and atmospheric exhibition of 125 prints by America's greatest tabloid news photographer. Sad, sordid, appalling, and electrifyingly exciting, these hard-edged black-and-white images capture the essence of New York in the Thirties and Forties, instant by instant (TT).

PLAY 
Dividing the Estate (Old Globe, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park, San Diego, Calif., closes Feb. 12). Another great New York show has come to California. Director Michael Wilson worked wonders with Horton Foote's grimly funny portrait of a houseful of Texans who've been sponging off their mother for so long that they've forgotten how to earn an honest buck, and several members of his original cast--including Elizabeth Ashley and Hallie Foote, the playwright's daughter--are on hand to repeat their indelible performances (TT).

CD 
Follies (P.S. Classics, two CDs). The original-cast album of Eric Schaeffer's standard-setting Kennedy Center revival of Stephen Sondheim's great 1971 musical, which transferred to Broadway in the fall of 2011 and is now approaching the end of its run there (it will move to Los Angeles in May). More fully representative of the show than any previous recorded version, it preserves the magnificent performances of Danny Burstein and Jan Maxwell, and is essential listening for anyone who believes, as I do, that Follies is one of the permanent landmarks of postwar musical comedy (TT).

PLAY 
Our Town (Broad Stage, Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica, closes Feb. 12). David Cromer's celebrated staging of Thornton Wilder's masterpiece, remounted in Los Angeles with Helen Hunt as the stage manager. Arrestingly and incisively unsentimental, Cromer's Our Town cuts to the heart of Wilder's familiar tale of a small New England town and makes it as fresh as a news flash. I'm not normally fond of surprise endings, but Cromer has tucked one into this production, and it packs the punch of a bolt of lightning. Do not miss this show for any reason whatsoever (TT).

BOOK 
Sabine Feisst, Schoenberg's New World: The American Years (Oxford, $35). A satisfyingly thorough and probing study of Arnold Schoenberg's life in America, to which he emigrated in 1933. Even if, like me, you don't care much for his music, you'll find it absorbing to read about how this most European of composers came to grips with the strange new world of southern California, which he liked far more than is generally realized. Though Feisst's prose style is decidedly academic, Schoenberg's New World tells a story so interesting that--for once--the quality of the writing doesn't matter (TT).

Out of the Past

Not new, but still worth a look or listen (and no less subject to change without notice).

CD 
Louis Jordan 1938-1950 (Fremeaux & Associés, two CDs). Imported from France, a near-perfect selection of thirty-six 78 sides by the singer-saxophonist and his Tympany Five, the jumping combo whose hard-swinging brand of populist jazz helped to set the musical agenda for rhythm and blues and early rock and roll. Not to worry--most of the big hits are here ("Choo-Choo Ch'Boogie," "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby," "Saturday Night Fish Fry"). If Jordan's joyous music doesn't make you smile and/or pat your foot, you need an intervention, or maybe a lobotomy (TT).

SCRIPT 
Horton Foote, Horton Foote's Three Trips to Bountiful: Teleplay, Stageplay, and Screenplay. Originally written for live TV in 1953, The Trip to Bountiful, the poignant story of an old woman trapped in Houston who longs to visit her rural home one last time, was adapted by Foote for the stage and, in 1983, the screen. This invaluable 1993 volume, published by Southern Methodist University Press, contains all three scripts, accompanied by interviews with Foote and his various collaborators. I can't think of a better way to study the differences between the three media--or to deepen your familiarity with a once-obscure play that is now rightly regarded as an American classic (TT).

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