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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 and 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).

GALLERY 
Helen Frankenthaler, Frankenthaler: East and Beyond (Knoedler & Company, 19 E. 70, January 8-March 11). Twelve paintings and twenty woodcuts reflecting Frankenthaler's longstanding interest in Asian art. If you're into color-field abstraction, be there (TT).

CD 
The Complete 1932-1940 Brunswick, Columbia and Master Recordings of Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra (Mosaic, eleven CDs). A boxful of prime stuff from the master, remastered with unprecedented sharpness and clarity and accompanied by Grammy-worthy liner notes by Ellington authority Steven Lasker. All surviving alternate takes are included, but they're bunched at the end of each disc, thus making for infinitely more pleasurable listening. No, it's not cheap, but you've still got to have it, and the edition is strictly limited to 5,000 copies. Don't dally--they're not kidding (TT).

DVD 
John Gielgud, Ages of Man (Entertainment One). Courtesy of the Archive of American Television, the 1966 broadcast version of the great actor's one-man Shakespeare show, which aired on CBS on two consecutive Sunday afternoons (the network suits didn't think anybody would sit still long enough to watch the whole show in one go) and has been in limbo ever since. Contemporary Shakespeare style has changed beyond recognition since Gielgud's day, but his elegant delivery and exquisitely modulated voice remain as seductive--and intelligent--as ever (TT).

BOOK 
David R. Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution (Twelve, $24.99). An astonishingly well-written memoir by Texas' best-known death-row lawyer in which he describes the nuts and bolts of how his clients make their (usually inevitable) way to the grave. No matter how you feel about capital punishment--and especially if you support it, whether staunchly or uneasily--this book will bring you face to face with the arbitrary, often capricious way in which the death penalty really works. It's the most sobering book that I read in 2010 (TT).

PLAY 
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago, closes Feb. 13 and reopens in Washington, D.C. Feb. 25). Tracy Letts, the author of August: Osage County, stars in a stunningly direct and unadorned production of Edward Albee's best play, backed up by a perfect ensemble cast and directed with precision and simplicity by Pam MacKinnon. I saw it a week too late to cram it into my best-of-the-year list, but you can be it'll be there come 2011 (TT).

Out of the Past

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

BOOK 
Norman Lebrecht, Mahler Remembered. Snippets and excerpts from contemporary memoirs, interviews, and newspaper and magazine stories, deftly arranged into a mosaic-like portrait of Gustav Mahler that is more readable than any existing biography of the composer. The place to start if you've just discovered Mahler's music and want to know what the man was like (TT).

CD 
Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mahler Symphony No. 4 in G Major. A 1939 radio broadcast by a conductor who knew Mahler well, took detailed notes on the composer-conductor's interpretation of the Fourth Symphony, and wrote them into his own score of the work. The result is a performance full of extravagantly romantic gestures whose authenticity, if problematic, is almost always convincing to the ear. Not that it matters, but the sound is quite tolerable (TT).

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