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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).

DANCE 
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (Joyce, 175 Eighth Ave., closes Jan. 2). The Trocks are an all-male ballet company whose "women" dance in drag. Sometimes they do the classics more or less straight, sometimes they dance brilliantly witty parodies, and sometimes they do out-of-left-field works like Merce Cunningham's Patterns in Space, which is on the first of the two programs that they're dancing during their current New York season. No matter what they're doing, the results are at once uproariously funny and mysteriously illuminating. To spend an evening with the Trocks is to think twice--or more--about what ballet is and how it works. Very strongly recommended, even to those who (like me) are usually allergic to drag acts (TT).

CD 
The Busch Quartet, Beethoven: The Late String Quartets (EMI Classics, three CDs). If you read my recent Wall Street Journal column about Adolf Busch and the Nazis and want to hear how this courageous artist made music, the place to start is EMI's collection of the Busch Quartet's legendary 78-era recordings of Beethoven's last six string quartets, which is available on CD or as a digital download. The playing may strike contemporary listeners as less than ideally polished, but the interpretations are uniquely penetrating, and Busch's violin playing combines forthrightness and Innigkeit in a way that no one has rivaled, before or since. Warning: don't expect state-of-the-art sound (TT).

BOOK 
Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Scribner, $30). An extraordinarily compelling history of a disease that once was unmentionable and is now a national obsession. Mukherjee's theme is the way in which the preternaturally stubborn resolve of generation after generation of cancer researchers has led them to make great scientific discoveries--then prevented them from seeing the flaws in their theories that are discovered by their successors. Sobering and splendidly well written (TT).

PLAY 
Play Dead (Players, 115 MacDougal). An off-Broadway spook show concocted by Teller (Penn Jillette's silent partner) in collaboration with Todd Robbins, who tells the more-or-less true stories of a serial killer, two phony mediums, a geek (look it up) and a murder victim whom Robbins knew in real life. During and in between these narratives, things...happen. The nature of these grisly occurrences can best be summarized by saying that the white suit worn by Robbins grows steadily redder throughout the evening. Great fun for anyone who likes magic and stage blood, and ideal for kids who are not--repeat, not--highly impressionable (TT).

MP3 
Coleman Hawkins, To Be or Not to Bop (Wnts). The first great jazz saxophonist was also one of a handful of swing-era giants who successfully embraced bebop, both on and off record. This new mp3-only downloadable collection contains twenty-two of the bop-and-bop-flavored 78 sides that Hawkins recorded in the mid-to-late-Forties with such then-youngsters as Dizzy Gillespie, J.J. Johnson, Hank Jones, Howard McGhee, Fats Navarro, Oscar Pettiford, and Max Roach, including the premiere recordings of "I Mean You," "Salt Peanuts" and "Woody'n You." It's the first time that Hawkins' key bop recordings have been released in a single-source anthology. Listen and marvel at his ability to ride the wave of a radically innovative new jazz style (TT).

Out of the Past

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

CD 
Robert Shaw Chamber Singers, Songs of Angels: Christmas Hymns and Carols (Telarc). Had it up to here with super-slick holiday musical fare? Then allow me to direct your attention to this 1994 CD, in which America's most celebrated choral conductor remade the much-loved a cappella arrangements of traditional carols that he first recorded on 78 in 1946. The singing is lovely, the arrangements tasteful. Guaranteed to cleanse your ears of Christmastide commercialism (TT).

NOVEL 
Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede. (Simon & Schuster, $25). In this quietly absorbing 1969 novel, the author of the book on which Jean Renoir's The River was based tells the story of a well-heeled British civil servant of a certain age who renounces the world, gives away her earthly possessions, and enters an abbey to become a cloistered nun. Whatever your religious views, if any, my guess is that you'll be impressed, not least because Godden portrays the social life (so to speak) of a tightly-knit religious community with absolute candor (TT).

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