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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Grand master

November 19, 2003 by Terry Teachout

Today, the National Endowment for the Arts announces the recipients of its Jazz Masters awards for 2004. One of them is Jim Hall, my favorite living jazz musician, whom I interviewed last week for a piece published in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. Here’s the lead:

In jazz, all fame is strictly relative. Jim Hall, the greatest living jazz guitarist, has been making records for close to a half-century. He’s worked with everybody from Sonny Rollins to Pat Metheny and played everywhere from the Village Vanguard to the White House. His colleagues view him with something approaching outright awe. But Mr. Hall, like most jazz musicians, is unknown to the public at large–a fact that doesn’t seem to bother him in the least. “It’s a privilege to be able to make a living playing jazz,” he says firmly. “Not too many people listen to me, but maybe I’d be nervous if I were a million-seller. I’d say, uh-oh, I did something wrong.”

Read the whole thing here.


If you’ve never heard Hall play, click here to purchase Jim Hall Live, the CD mentioned in the piece. Recently reissued by Verve, it’s one of his own favorites–and the first Jim Hall album I ever bought, a quarter-century ago. I still love it.

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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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