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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

You are here: Home / 2003 / October / Archives for 26th

Archives for October 26, 2003

TT: Latest face

October 26, 2003 by Terry Teachout

New to “Sites to See” as of today is Cup of Chicha, of which (whom?) Our Girl and I are both fans. Click here or in the right-hand column, as you like it.


We urge you to troll through the roll, by the way. Not all the sites will be equally to your liking, but all are at least worth an irregular peek, and I check out most of them at least once every other day. Right now I am especially fond of Household Opera and Pullquote, and of course life without my daily doses of Maud, Old Hag, and You-Know-Who
would scarcely be worth living.


OGIC has her own favorites, which overlap substantially but not completely with mine. I’ll let her fill you in.


Did I mention that we are members in good standing of the Cool Lit Club? And that you’re not?

TT: Music to answer e-mail by

October 26, 2003 by Terry Teachout

I don’t know about OGIC, but I’ve answered just about all of my mail. (I understand she’s tailgating today. Harrumph! No doubt she’ll tell you all about it….)


I’m heading into a four-deadline, two-play week, by the way, so you won’t be hearing as much from me as usual, but I promise not to disappear even close to completely, and Our Girl has plenty of stuff on her mind. We’ll keep you fed and happy.


In the meantime, here’s a playlist. I recovered nearly all my data after that horrendous hard-drive explosion, but one thing I did lose was my mp3 files, every last one of them, arrgh. The good part is that I’ve been ripping lots and lots of CDs in the course of the past couple of weeks in order to reconstitute my Lost iTunes Jukebox, and my listening has been nicely eclectic as a result. Here’s what I played (and ripped) as I answered your mail this evening:


1. Elgar Introduction and Allegro, performed by Benjamin Britten and the English Chamber Orchestra (one of the most underrated of all string-orchestra masterpieces, conducted by a great composer to boot).


2. Coldplay, “Yellow”


3. Django Reinhardt and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, “Swing 42” (I can’t hear this record often enough, for some reason)


4. Paul Whiteman, “Dardanella” (arrangement by Bill Challis, solo by Bix Beiderbecke)


5. Gerry Mulligan and Zoot Sims, “Davenport Blues” (in honor of Bix, obviously)


6. Luciana Souza, “Doce de Coco” (from Brazilian Duos, a CD you must own)


7. Faur

TT: For the record

October 26, 2003 by Terry Teachout

By way of The Corner, this letter to the editor of the Rocky Mountain News:

Recently, a co-worker asked me if I had seen the movie Bowling for Columbine yet, I told her absolutely not! My answer surprised her, given the fact my son, Matthew, was one of the 13 murdered during the deadliest school shooting in our country’s history. I explained to her that prior to the public release of the movie the families of the injured and dead were invited by Michael Moore to attend a preview screening. How thoughtful.


Our family and others considered attending because we were genuinely interested in his message to the public regarding gun control and school violence.


However, once we discovered he was going to charge us admission we refrained from doing so.


It’s laughable that Moore attempts to portray himself as an anti-establishment liberal who is the voice of the common folk, when in fact he is no better than the greedy capitalists he shuns. Maybe now that he has made millions of dollars off the blood of our children he could toss a DVD or two our way to view.


Ann M. Kechter

TT: Not the place’s fault

October 26, 2003 by Terry Teachout

I just got back from Wesla Whitfield‘s last set at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel (right in time to reset my clocks), and I simply had to sit
down and tell you how wonderful it was. The room was full of singers, among them Julie Wilson and Mary Foster Conklin, and Whitfield was well aware of it, for her singing was everything that cabaret ought to be and sometimes is: sly and playful, daring and free, musically impeccable, devastatingly emotional. (I could–and should–say all the same things about her accompanists, Mike Greensill on piano and Sean Smith on bass, for they, too, were flying.)


The Oak Room and I have a history. I used to go there all the time to see my old friend Nancy LaMott, and when she died, eight Decembers ago (how can so much time have passed?), I found it all but impossible to go back. It took a long time before I started to feel even halfway at ease in the Algonquin, and even then my memories often made me too melancholy to appreciate whatever I happened to be hearing, no matter how good it was.


Of course Nancy was on my mind last night, for Wesla Whitfield was the only cabaret singer she admitted to admiring, and she would have really, really loved the late show from which I just returned. The Oak Room hasn’t seen much of Whitfield in recent years, but after an evening like that, I can’t imagine they won’t bring her back for a nice long run. A one-night stand is about thirty nights too few.


I forgot to mention in my recent posting
about Whitfield that she has a new CD out, September Songs. Don’t wait for Christmas. Don’t even wait for Monday. Click on the link and order it now.

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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