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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for September 7, 2005

TT: One is a wanderer

September 7, 2005 by Terry Teachout

On Tuesday I awoke an hour ahead of the alarm clock, wrenched from fitful sleep by the unbelievable but nonetheless self-evident fact that I was lying in the master bedroom of the Schwartz House in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, designed in 1939 by Frank Lloyd Wright. Unwilling to waste another slugabed moment, I rolled out of bed and started prowling through the house in my bare feet, stopping just long enough to switch on my iPod and portable speakers and resume the completely unscientific experiment I’d begun the night before. What kind of music sounds best in a Wright house? Should the occasion ever present itself to you, I recommend Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Piano Sonata, Samuel Barber’s Summer Music, and Pat Metheny’s Bright Size Life.


At ten I heard an unfamiliar buzz. Realizing after a startled instant that it was the doorbell, I ran sixty-three feet from one end of the house to the other and opened the door for Gail Fox, a Two Rivers art historian who has spent the past couple of decades documenting the Schwartz House and knows more about it than I know about George Balanchine. We spent three lively hours touring the house and grounds, in the course of which she proved to be an enthusiast of the very best kind, irresistibly voluble and eager to answer the most arcane questions I could think up. Then I packed my bag, tucked the key under the doormat for the next occupant, and hit the road for Spring Green, home of American Players Theatre, which I’ll be seeing later in the week, and Taliesin, Wright’s home and headquarters, which I’ll be touring today.


Having no more appointments for the rest of the day and nothing left to do but find a place to eat, I slipped off the interstate and drove along two-lane highways to Spring Green, passing through a dozen friendly-looking villages with such quaint names as Sauk City, Lodi (Just about a year ago I set out on the road/Seekin’ my fame and fortune, lookin’ for a pot of gold), and Prairie du Sac as I listened to Lee Wiley, Erin McKeown, and Peter Pears’ recording of Schubert’s Winterreise (suitable music for a solitary wanderer). It occurred to me toward day’s end that I ought to be lonely, having spent the preceding five hours driving by myself down near-deserted roads, but by then the late-afternoon sun had dipped far enough in the sky to cover the cornfields with a glowing yellow blanket, and all at once my heart swelled with gratitude. How beautiful the world is, I thought, and how lucky I am to be in the midst of it! It was the first time I’d felt that way since Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans.


Now I’m sitting in a nondescript motel room in Spring Green, listening to Count Basie’s Jive at Five and digesting the heart-attack special I consumed an hour ago at a steak house up the road. It’s been a week since I last slept a full night, and I don’t have to be anywhere until ten in the morning, when I’m expected at Taliesin. From there I’ll head over to Madison to dine with Ann Althouse and see the Madison Repertory Theatre. That will put an end to my tranquil interlude–but not before I pay a long-deferred visit to the land of dreams.


See you tomorrow.

TT: One is a wanderer

September 7, 2005 by Terry Teachout

On Tuesday I awoke an hour ahead of the alarm clock, wrenched from fitful sleep by the unbelievable but nonetheless self-evident fact that I was lying in the master bedroom of the Schwartz House in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, designed in 1939 by Frank Lloyd Wright. Unwilling to waste another slugabed moment, I rolled out of bed and started prowling through the house in my bare feet, stopping just long enough to switch on my iPod and portable speakers and resume the completely unscientific experiment I’d begun the night before. What kind of music sounds best in a Wright house? Should the occasion ever present itself to you, I recommend Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Piano Sonata, Samuel Barber’s Summer Music, and Pat Metheny’s Bright Size Life.


At ten I heard an unfamiliar buzz. Realizing after a startled instant that it was the doorbell, I ran sixty-three feet from one end of the house to the other and opened the door for Gail Fox, a Two Rivers art historian who has spent the past couple of decades documenting the Schwartz House and knows more about it than I know about George Balanchine. We spent three lively hours touring the house and grounds, in the course of which she proved to be an enthusiast of the very best kind, irresistibly voluble and eager to answer the most arcane questions I could think up. Then I packed my bag, tucked the key under the doormat for the next occupant, and hit the road for Spring Green, home of American Players Theatre, which I’ll be seeing later in the week, and Taliesin, Wright’s home and headquarters, which I’ll be touring today.


Having no more appointments for the rest of the day and nothing left to do but find a place to eat, I slipped off the interstate and drove along two-lane highways to Spring Green, passing through a dozen friendly-looking villages with such quaint names as Sauk City, Lodi (Just about a year ago I set out on the road/Seekin’ my fame and fortune, lookin’ for a pot of gold), and Prairie du Sac as I listened to Lee Wiley, Erin McKeown, and Peter Pears’ recording of Schubert’s Winterreise (suitable music for a solitary wanderer). It occurred to me toward day’s end that I ought to be lonely, having spent the preceding five hours driving by myself down near-deserted roads, but by then the late-afternoon sun had dipped far enough in the sky to cover the cornfields with a glowing yellow blanket, and all at once my heart swelled with gratitude. How beautiful the world is, I thought, and how lucky I am to be in the midst of it! It was the first time I’d felt that way since Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans.


Now I’m sitting in a nondescript motel room in Spring Green, listening to Count Basie’s Jive at Five and digesting the heart-attack special I consumed an hour ago at a steak house up the road. It’s been a week since I last slept a full night, and I don’t have to be anywhere until ten in the morning, when I’m expected at Taliesin. From there I’ll head over to Madison to dine with Ann Althouse and see the Madison Repertory Theatre. That will put an end to my tranquil interlude–but not before I pay a long-deferred visit to the land of dreams.


See you tomorrow.

TT: This is Louisss, Dolly!

September 7, 2005 by Terry Teachout

Jerry Jazz Musician, the online magazine, interviewed me at length this month about Hotter Than That, my Louis Armstrong biography-in-the-making:

I guess you could call me an intellectual, although I don’t write just for intellectuals, or in a sense even for intellectuals. I just write for people, for folks, and while this Armstrong book–like the Mencken book before it–will be the product of a lot of scholarly inquiry and knowledge and thinking, I want the end product to be something that my mother can read. I want to explain Louis to her in the light of all of the technical things that I know about him, but I want that technical superstructure to be completely disassembled, packed and put away. In the end, the book should be a story, the story of a remarkable man, totally accessible to the reader who is not a musician, scholar or intellectual, but who simply wants to learn about him….

Read the whole thing here.

TT: This is Louisss, Dolly!

September 7, 2005 by Terry Teachout

Jerry Jazz Musician, the online magazine, interviewed me at length this month about Hotter Than That, my Louis Armstrong biography-in-the-making:

I guess you could call me an intellectual, although I don’t write just for intellectuals, or in a sense even for intellectuals. I just write for people, for folks, and while this Armstrong book–like the Mencken book before it–will be the product of a lot of scholarly inquiry and knowledge and thinking, I want the end product to be something that my mother can read. I want to explain Louis to her in the light of all of the technical things that I know about him, but I want that technical superstructure to be completely disassembled, packed and put away. In the end, the book should be a story, the story of a remarkable man, totally accessible to the reader who is not a musician, scholar or intellectual, but who simply wants to learn about him….

Read the whole thing here.

TT: Down the road

September 7, 2005 by Terry Teachout

Up and coming on my calendar:


– OCTOBER 17: Julia Dollison celebrates the release of Observatory, her first CD, with a one-nighter at the Jazz Standard


– OCTOBER 18: Press opening of the Manhattan Theatre Club revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular


– OCTOBER 26: Publication date of Classic American Popular Song: The Second Half-Century, 1950-2000, by David Jenness and Don Velsey (Routledge)

TT: Down the road

September 7, 2005 by Terry Teachout

Up and coming on my calendar:


– OCTOBER 17: Julia Dollison celebrates the release of Observatory, her first CD, with a one-nighter at the Jazz Standard


– OCTOBER 18: Press opening of the Manhattan Theatre Club revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular


– OCTOBER 26: Publication date of Classic American Popular Song: The Second Half-Century, 1950-2000, by David Jenness and Don Velsey (Routledge)

TT: Number, please

September 7, 2005 by Terry Teachout

– Total production cost in 1927 of Buster Keaton’s feature film The General: $750,000


– The same amount in today’s dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $7,846,215.94


(Source: Edward McPherson, Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat)

TT: Number, please

September 7, 2005 by Terry Teachout

– Total production cost in 1927 of Buster Keaton’s feature film The General: $750,000


– The same amount in today’s dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $7,846,215.94


(Source: Edward McPherson, Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat)

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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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