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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 music critic of Commentary. more

ABOUT TERRY'S BOOKS 
Terry recently finished writing a biography of Louis Armstrong that will be published by Harcourt in the fall of 2009. He contributed an essay to Coudal Partners' newly published Field-Tested Books (as did OGIC) and wrote the introductions to William Bailey on Canvas and the paperback edition of Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado. One of his essays will be included in Robert Gottlieb's Reading Dance, out in November from Pantheon. more

ABOUT TERRY'S OPERA 
Terry is collaborating with Paul Moravec on The Letter, an operatic version of Somerset Maugham's 1927 play. It was commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera and will open there on July 25, 2009. Here is an ongoing series of progress reports on the writing and production of The Letter.
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Lend me your ears (and eyes)
Men at work
Men at work (II)
Men at work (III)
Men at work (IV)
For better and worse
Men at work (V)
Men (and women) at work (VI)
Notes from an unkept diary
The case for lower-case opera
The envelope, please
Right turn at Albuquerque
Moment's notice
Men at work (VII)
Scene stealing (I)
Scene stealing (II)
Becoming an artist

SEE TERRY TALK 
To view Terry's December videoblog, go here.

Archive  5299 entries and counting

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).

PLAY 
Equus (Broadhurst, 235 W. 44, closes Feb. 8). A masterpiece it's not, but Peter Shaffer's 1973 play about a mentally disturbed stableboy and the psychatrist who has second thoughts about curing him is a spectacular piece of theater-for-its-own-sake, impressive enough that it's easy to overlook the creakiness of the play's intellectual underpinnings. This is the first Broadway revival of Equus, for which Daniel Radcliffe presumably deserves credit. Not surprisingly, the presence of Harry Potter in the cast has captured the imagination of the mass media--especially since he strips to the buff and runs around the stage in the next-to-last scene--but Radcliffe turns out to be a damned fine actor, while Richard Griffiths, lately of The History Boys, is as good as it gets (TT).

CD 
The Soprano Summit in 1975 and More (Arbors). No, not that kind of soprano. This two-CD set contains fifteen previously unissued concert recordings by Soprano Summit, the celebrated jazz combo that featured Kenny Davern and Bob Wilber on soprano saxophone and clarinet. Soprano Summit was one of the finest traditional jazz groups of the Seventies--maybe ever--and these piping-hot performances show why it made so lasting an impression. (Marty Grosz's wonderfully old-fashioned rhythm guitar is especially prominent in the mix.) If this CD doesn't make you smile, get your face fixed. Also included are nine additional live tracks separately featuring Davern and Wilber in the company of Dick Wellstood and Ruby Braff (TT).

GALLERY 
Adrienne Farb: Recent Paintings and Works on Paper (Mary Ryan Gallery, 527 W. 26, up through Oct. 11). Complex explosions of color from a New York-based abstract painter who fills her canvases with slashing, tightly packed vertical stripes that pulse and throb. Farb's work recalls the purity of the color-field painters of the Sixties, reimagined in wholly contemporary terms (TT).

CD 
Paul Moravec, Cool Fire/Chamber Symphony (Naxos, out Sept. 30). Two new large-scale pieces of chamber music by my Pulitzer Prize-winning operatic collaborator, performed to perfection by a group of instrumentalists from the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival and now available for pre-ordering from amazon.com. I wrote the liner notes: "Pure Moravec from first bar to last, full of heart-lifting melodies and enlivened by the proliferating rhythmic energy which propels the light-footed, almost Mendelssohnian scherzi that are to be found in most of Paul's multi-movement works. Note, too, the ingeniously wrought small-scale instrumentation, whose luminous transparency reminds me at times of Ravel." Yes, he's that good (TT).

BOOK 
David Thomson, "Have You Seen...?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films (Knopf, $39.95). A companion volume to The New Biographical Dictionary of Film in which my favorite film critic holds forth on a thousand variously significant movies--some great, some good, some awful--all discussed in quirky single-page essays that are models of pithy, quotable idiosyncrasy. Have You Seen...? will be the book of the season for smart filmgoers who love a good argument (TT).

Out of the Past

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

FILM 
Act of Violence. A hard, unrelenting 1949 film noir about a World War II vet (Van Heflin) who made a bad mistake and the crippled ex-friend (Robert Ryan at his tortured best) who means to make him pay for it. Directed with exceptional skill by Fred Zinnemann, this tough tale of postwar angst also features strong supporting performances by Janet Leigh (as Heflin's innocent young wife) and Mary Astor (as an aging hooker) and a memorable score by Bronislau Kaper. Noir wasn't MGM's strong suit, but this film is an exception to the rule (TT).

BOOK 
Sybille Bedford, A Legacy (Counterpoint, $16). All of the adjectives Sybille Bedford's writing brings to mind belong to the same family: sharp, acute, penetrating, piercing, and so on. In her most famous novel, two marriages, inauspicious in different ways, bind together the fates of three families in late 18th- and early 19th-century Germany. How could it have taken me this long to discover Bedford? Why isn't a writer with her observational powers, slicing wit, and historical grasp--a woman whose work no less a cutting edge than Dorothy Parker found "almost terrifyingly brilliant"--better known? The curious can start with A Legacy, whose certainties and mysteries stand in perfect balance (OGIC).

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