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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., JR Books in England, and Larousse in Brazil. He is currently at work on Mood Indigo: A Life of Duke Ellington. He wrote the introductions to William Bailey on Canvas and the paperback editions of Richard Stark's Flashfire and Firebreak and Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado. One of his essays is included in Robert Gottlieb's Reading Dance, and he contributed notes on recordings by Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa, and Oscar Peterson to Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology. 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 collaborated with Paul Moravec on Danse Russe, a backstage comedy about the making of The Rite of Spring that was 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 

Archive  7502 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).

NOVEL 
Wesley Stace, Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer (Picador, $15 paper). A bewitchingly clever historical thriller in which the lives and work of Peter Warlock, Constant Lambert, and Carlo Gesualdo are blended into the hair-raising tale of an unworldly music critic who writes an opera libretto for a flint-hearted composer who returns the favor in the most malevolent way imaginable. The author (better known in pop-music circles as John Wesley Harding) has done a virtuosic job of fusing fact with fiction, and the result is one of the few novels with a musical setting in which the background is rendered accurately. Absolutely not for musicians only, though those who already know the dramatis personae will be dazzled by the sure-footed skill with which Stace has put their real-life stories to novelistic use (TT).

GALLERY 
Wolf Kahn: Color and Consequence (Ameringer McEnery Yohe, 525 W. 22, up through July 16). New paintings by an underappreciated modern master, a Hans Hofmann pupil who renders the American landscape in high-key colors that recall the luminous palette of Pierre Bonnard. The result is a deeply personal style in which abstraction and representation are so closely intertwined that they can't be teased apart (TT).

BOOK 
Richard Stark, Butcher's Moon (University of Chicago, $15 paper). The best of Donald Westlake's pseudonymous thrillers about Parker, the toughest burglar who ever lived, in which he goes up against an entire big-city crime syndicate--with a little help from a lot of friends. Out of print for years and years, Butcher's Moon is the ultimate Parker novel, best read as an installment in the series as a whole but comprehensible and wholly satisfying on its own (TT).

CD 
The Essential Rosanne Cash (Sony Legacy, two CDs). Thirty-six tracks from one of America's most creative singer-songwriters, chosen by Cash herself. An ideal one-stop introduction to her work, especially when heard in tandem with Composed, Cash's 2010 memoir (TT).

PLAY 
Play Dead (Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal, closes July 24). Teller's wonderfully creepy off-Broadway theatrical spook show has posted its closing notice, so if you haven't seen it yet, go while you still can. The illusions are spectacular, the humor delicious. Two pieces of advice: (1) If asked to go onstage, say yes. (2) Wait until after the show to eat dinner (TT).

Out of the Past

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

CD 
Miss Peggy Lee (Capitol, four CDs). One of the three or four top names on the short list of great pop-jazz singers, Peggy Lee was exceedingly well served by this 1998 retrospective of 113 tracks recorded for Capitol in the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties. All the hits are here, including "Fever" and "Is That All There Is," plus a sizable helping of her own excellent songs. The liner notes are by Gene Lees, who knew Lee and understood her. The discographical information is sketchy, but you can find out everything you want to know here. If you're planning a road trip, pack this set (TT).

BOOK 
James Agate, The Selective Ego. You don't have to be an intellectual to be a great diarist, and Agate, the debt-ridden, spectacularly self-involved drama critic of the London Sunday Times from 1923 until his death in 1947, wrote about the printable parts of his life with careful evasion (he was a brothel-loving homosexual given to masochistic practices of the grossest sort) and colossal panache. This compact selection of entries from Ego, the nine-volume series of diaries that Agate published in the Thirties and Forties, is a superlative bedside book, hugely amusing and easily readable in random snatches (TT).

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