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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. and JR Books in England. One of his essays is included in Robert Gottlieb's Reading Dance. 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 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 OPERAS 
Terry is collaborating with Paul Moravec on Danse Russe, a backstage comedy about the making of The Rite of Spring that will be premiered by Philadelphia's Center City Opera Theater on April 28, 2011. To read more about Danse Russe, go 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).

TV 
Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way (Turner Classic Movies, Dec. 6, five p.m. ET). In honor of the pianist's ninetieth birthday, TCM is airing a new Bruce Ricker documentary for which Clint Eastwood, a well-known jazz fan, served as executive producer. I haven't screened it yet, but Ricker has a good track record, and my guess is that the show will contain a fair number of performance clips dating from the great days of the Brubeck Quartet, so tune in and see for yourself (TT).

MP3 
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (Hallmark). You never know until you look. The much-coveted Columbia Masterworks double-LP set of the original 1956 Broadway production of the most influential play of the twentieth century--complete and unabridged--was sneaked into print earlier this year as an mp3-only download. Now you can hear Bert Lahr, E.G. Marshall, Kurt Kasznar, and Alvin Epstein (the last of whom is, glory be, still with us!) performing Samuel Beckett's masterpiece with supreme, sublime theatricality. No program notes, alas, so to read about how the Herbert Berghof-directed production took shape, read the relevant chapter in Notes on a Cowardly Lion, John Lahr's wonderful 1969 biography of his father--but do that later. Right now, go straight to your computer, download this album at once, and listen to what the Cowardly Lion made of Estragon. The price? $3.56. Believe me, you're never going to get a better deal on anything as long as you live (TT).

BOOK 
Alyn Shipton, Hi-De-Ho: The Life of Cab Calloway (Oxford, $29.95). This is, surprisingly, the first full-length biography of the creator of Minnie the Moocher and Smokey Joe, and it's a solid piece of work, a bit short on color but thoroughly reliable and informative. Contrary to the received view of snobbish jazz critics, Calloway was a first-rate jazz-flavored pop singer whose vocals were comparable in quality to the brilliant ensemble playing of the big band that he led throughout the Thirties and Forties, and Shipton gives him his due. Must reading for swing buffs, especially in tandem with The Chu and Dizzy Years, Hep Records' indispensable two-CD compilation of Calloway's key 78s (TT).

CD 
Murray Perahia, Perahia Brahms (Sony Classical). An anthology of Brahms' finest works for solo piano--the Handel Variations, the B Minor and G Minor Rhapsodies, and the ten intermezzi and other short pieces of Opp. 118 and 119--all played in an understated, unexaggerated style that emphasizes their autumnal virtues. Not only is this the strongest single-disc collection of Brahms' piano music since Van Cliburn's My Favorite Brahms, originally released in 1975, but Perahia's chastely classical playing contrasts very nicely with Cliburn's expansive romanticism (TT).

ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM 
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Ghostlight). Now on CD, the score of the first Broadway musical ever to make fully effective and idiomatic use of rock. Michael Friedman's hard-edged, guitar-driven emo-style songs are tuneful, smart, and catchy (especially "Ten Little Indians"). Nor is there the slightest trace of slickness: this is real rock, not the synthetic kind. See the show by all means, but the best of it is right here (TT).

Out of the Past

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

CD 
Mitchell's Christian Singers, Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, Vol. 1 (1934-1936) (Document). The rough-hewn, sometimes startlingly dissonant a cappella harmonies of this vocal quartet, which traveled from North Carolina to Carnegie Hall in 1939 to sing at John Hammond's first From Spirituals to Swing concert and subsequently got written up in Time, have since caught the ears of everyone from Bob Crosby to Maria Muldaur. The first volume of Document's comprehensive reissue of the group's 78 recordings contains its best-known side, "Traveling Shoes," plus plenty of other gospel songs that swing and shout like nobody's business (TT).

NOVEL 
John P. Marquand, So Little Time. All but forgotten today, this 1943 study of a disappointed playwright who married up and sold out is also a powerfully evocative snapshot of America on the eve of World War II. It's not a great book by any means, and Marquand would work the same turf more effectively in Point of No Return and Women and Thomas Harrow, but I can't think of another American novel that does a better job of suggesting what it felt like to watch the world sliding toward catastrophe (TT).

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