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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 Cluster of Sunlight: The Life of Louis Armstrong, which will be published by Harcourt in the fall of 2009. One of his essays is included in Robert Gottlieb's Reading Dance, just out from Pantheon. He contributed an essay to Coudal Partners' 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. 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
In one piece
Among the brethren
By the clock
Size matters

SEE TERRY TALK 
To watch Terry's wsj.com review of American Buffalo, go here.

Archive  5423 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 
Dividing the Estate (Booth, 222 W. 45, closes Jan. 4). 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 is the best-written, best-acted play in town, not excluding August: Osage County and A Man for All Seasons. It's the go-to show for theater buffs who long to spend a whole evening on Broadway without having their intelligence insulted. Give yourself a ticket for Christmas (TT).

BOOK 
John Adams, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life (FSG, $26). A hugely important, exceedingly well-written memoir in which the composer of Nixon in China and Doctor Atomic explains with engaging clarity why he broke with modernism to forge a new, more accessible style of classical composition. Even if, like me, you find it impossible to warm up to Adams' minimalist music, this book will leave you in no doubt of why it has made so deep an impression on a generation of American composers and listeners (TT).

CD 
John McCormack, Deutsche Lieder 1914-1936 (Hamburger Archiv für Gesangskunst). When not singing "Mother Machree" and "The Garden Where the Praties Grow," Ireland's favorite tenor was a dead-serious recitalist who had a knack for bringing out the ballad-like quality of German art songs. This beautifully remastered imported CD contains all twenty-seven of his surviving recordings of songs by Brahms, Mendelssohn, Raff, Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf. Some are performed in English, others in Irish-tinged German, but all are sung with a combination of straightforwardness and sweet lyricism that I find completely charming. Would that McCormack had recorded twice as many Lieder, but to hear him singing Wolf's "Herr, was trägt der Boden hier" (his favorite art song) is to be reminded of how lucky we are to live in the age of recorded sound (TT).

GALLERY 
John Marin: Ten Masterworks in Watercolor (Meredith Ward, 44 E. 74, up through Dec. 20). Ten important works on paper by the pioneering American modernist whose virtuosity in the watercolor medium remains unrivaled. Some are from Marin's estate, others from private collections, and most are familiar only to Marin specialists. A rare opportunity to view a great American painter at the peak of his powers (TT).

GALLERY 
Frankenthaler at Eighty: Six Decades (Knoedler & Company, 19 E. 70, up through Jan. 10). Nine large-scale canvases and works on paper painted between 1957 and 2002 by America's foremost abstractionist. A superb miniature retrospective that concisely sums up Helen Frankenthaler's creative achievement (TT).

Out of the Past

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

BOOK 
Karen Wilkin, Giorgio Morandi (Rizzoli, $35). If you want to get up to speed on Morandi, this lavishly illustrated monograph, published in 1998, is the place to start. The most lucid and sensible of present-day art critics, Wilkin explains with perfect clarity why the Italian painter's soft-spoken, deceptively repetitive tabletop microcosms rank among the greatest achievements of twentieth-century art. Look first, then read--then look again (TT).

CD 
Louis Jordan and His Tympani Five (JSP, five CDs). After Fats Waller, Louis Jordan was the great exponent of good-time small-group jazz whose entertainment value cunningly concealed its musical sophistication. A superb alto saxophonist who had a knack for singing (and picking) comic songs, Jordan put together a "jump band" so appealing that it was successfully marketed to blacks and whites alike, in the process leaving an indelible stamp on both R&B and early white rock and roll. This budget-priced, gorgeously remastered five-CD box set contains all 131 of the recordings Jordan and his combo cut for Decca between 1938 and 1950, not a few of which topped the charts. Like Waller's recordings, they never fail to hit the spot--especially after a long, tiring day at the office. Listen to them in tandem with John Chilton's excellent 1994 biography of Jordan (TT).

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