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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, Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, has just been published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the U.S. and JR Books in England. One of his essays is included in Robert Gottlieb's Reading Dance, published last year by 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

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

ABOUT TERRY'S OPERA 
Terry collaborated with Paul Moravec 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. To see excerpts from the opera, go here. To read the Opera News review of the premiere, 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).

TV 
Great Performances: Passing Strange (PBS, Jan. 13, nine p.m. ET, check local listings). Spike Lee's performance film-documentary of the Broadway production of Stew's 2007 rock musical about the travails of a middle-class black bohemian makes its broadcast debut this month. The music is a bit plain-sounding, but the book and lyrics offer a revealing glimpse of a side of black life in America that rarely gets talked about, much less sung about. Annie Dorsen's staging is full of punch, and Lee has filmed the show with tremendous verve (TT).

CD 
Rosanne Cash, The List (Manhattan). Everybody loves this CD, as well they should, so I'll just add my two cents' worth: Johnny Cash's daughter, who has long been one of the best country-pop singer-songwriters around, blasts the bull's-eye out of the target with this collection of twelve songs chosen from a list of "essential country songs" that was drawn up by her famous father many years ago. The singing is poignant, the band immaculate. No matter what your favorite kind of music may happen be, The List belongs in your CD player (TT).

BOOK 
Stephen Calt, Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary (University of Illinos Press, $26.95). An amazingly thorough, dryly witty glossary of the argot used by blues singers who recorded between 1923 and 1949. If you ever scratched your head over the meaning of such phrases as "alley baby" or "monkey woman," scratch no more--the answers are here (TT).

PLAY 
The Starry Messenger (Acorn, 410 W. 42, closes Dec. 19). After an eight-year absence from the New York stage, Kenneth Lonergan has made a decisive return to form with his new play about a middle-aged teacher of astronomy (Matthew Broderick) whose life has gone sour. That Lonergan should have taken that most hackneyed of subjects, the midlife crisis, and turned it into a play of breathtaking subtlety and honesty is a not-so-minor miracle. The New Group's production is beyond praise (TT).

OPERA 
Il Trittico (Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, performances on Dec. 9 and 12). Patricia Racette, who starred in The Letter, is now playing all three of the soprano leads in Puccini's triptych of one-act operas. I'm prejudiced, needless to say, so instead of singing her praises, I'll merely report that the audience burst into very loud shouts of approval after her aria in "Suor Angelica" when I saw the production last week. Jack O'Brien's staging is decidedly Broadwayish, with megabuck sets to match. Great, great fun (TT).

Out of the Past

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

CD 
Fritz Kreisler: The Charming Maverick (EMI, ten CDs). Kreisler's playing exuded the spirit of turn-of-the-century Vienna, and this magnificent set, which includes digitally remastered versionf of his classic 78-era recordings of concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruch, Mendelssohn, and Mozart, the complete Beethoven violin sonatas, and a dozen of his own delectable encore pieces, belongs in the collection of every serious music lover. The price is as right as it could possibly be, so break out the Sachertorte and prepare to smile (TT).

BOOK 
Arlene Croce, Writing in the Dark, Dancing in The New Yorker (University Press of Florida, $24.95 paper). After Edwin Denby's Dance Writings and Poetry, this 2000 anthology of Croce's New Yorker reviews is the best single-author collection of dance criticism in print, a volume indispensable to anyone who wants to understand ballet and modern dance in the Seventies and Eighties. Comprehensively informed and passionately, sometimes exasperatingly opinionated, these pieces are now part of history. They're also sumptuously well written, and I can testify from personal experience that even if you've never seen a ballet, they'll make you want to go right out and discover George Balanchine and Paul Taylor and Mark Morris. I did (TT).

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