Archives for May 26, 2006

I just got back from the Jazz Standard, where Sarah and I heard Roger Kellaway‘s first set. It was stupendous.

Kellaway is currently fronting a piano-guitar-bass trio, which he claims to be the fulfillment of a “childhood dream.” Oscar Peterson led just such a group in the Fifties, and Kellaway, a lifelong Peterson fan who has always enjoyed playing without a drummer, knows how to make the most of the elbow room afforded by that wonderfully flexible instrumentation. Russell Malone is the guitarist, Jay Leonhart the bassist. The three men opened the set with a super-sly version of Benny Golson’s “Killer Joe,” and within four bars you knew they were going to swing really, really hard. So they did, with Kellaway pitching his patented curve balls all night long, including a bitonal arrangement of Bobby Darin’s “Splish Splash” and what surely must have been the first time that the Sons of the Pioneers’ “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” has ever been performed by a jazz group.

Everybody in the band (including vibraphonist Stefon Harris, who joined the trio for “Cotton Tail,” “You Don’t Know What Love Is” and “52nd Street Theme”) was smoking. Kellaway, though, was…well, I really don’t have words to describe the proliferating creativity and rhythmic force of his piano playing. Sarah did pretty well, though: “Did you see my jaw drop?” she asked me when it was all over. Russell Malone, with whom I chatted between sets, put it even more tersely. “That man is scary,” he said, shaking his head.

After I came home, I looked up my Washington Post review of the last time I heard Kellaway in person, a two-piano gig in 2004 with Bill Charlap at the second keyboard:

I was lucky enough to be at Birdland when Roger Kellaway and Bill Charlap gave the best live two-piano jazz performance I’ve heard in my entire life. The bedazzlingly eclectic Kellaway, who has been holed up on the West Coast for years, finally decided to head east and show the rest of the world his formidable stuff. For his long-delayed return…he joined forces with Charlap, who usually prefers suave understatement to single combat. Not this time: Kellaway was loaded for bear, and Charlap rose to the occasion. Their version of “Blue in Green” suggested an off-the-cuff collaboration between Bill Evans and Maurice Ravel, while the ferociously competitive “Strike Up the Band” with which they set the evening in motion sounded like two guys shooting roman candles at each other in a locked room. (“Lotta black notes on that page,” Charlap said to me afterward, grinning slyly.)

This set was that good.

Kellaway and his colleagues will be at the Jazz Standard through Sunday night. If you’re anywhere near New York City between now and then–and I’m talking about a five-state radius–do your damnedest to come hear them. If not, fear not: IPO, Kellaway’s new record label, is taping the engagement for release on a forthcoming live CD. In the meantime, go out right this second and get a copy of Remembering Bobby Darin, the first album by the West Coast edition of Kellaway’s Peterson-style trio.

What are you waiting for? Get moving!

UPDATE: Here’s a link to my Washington Post review of the CD reissue of Roger Kellaway Cello Quartet. Buy that, too.

In today’s Wall Street Journal I report on my recent visit to Chicago, where I saw Chicago Shakespeare‘s production of Henry IV and the
Court Theatre‘s revival of Peter Shaffer’s Lettice and Lovage. Both are smashing:

Next month Chicago Shakespeare Theater takes “Henry IV,” staged by Barbara Gaines, the company’s artistic director, to Stratford-upon-Avon, the Bard’s home town, where it will be performed as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s year-long RSC Complete Works Festival. In preparation for that trip, Chicago Shakespeare is presenting a month-long run of “Henry IV” on its home turf. I rank it among the best Shakespeare productions I’ve seen in recent years, though it will be interesting to see how Ms. Gaines’ no-nonsense approach fares with English critics, most of whom seem to prefer their Shakespeare smothered in political sauce and dished up with a garnish of gimmickry….

Patricia Hodges is best known for having replaced Mary Tyler Moore two seasons ago in Neil Simon’s “Rose’s Dilemma,” an ungrateful task that she brought off with the utmost panache. She is no less satisfying in “Lettice and Lovage,” investing her larger-than-life part with a vibrant, stage-filling physicality that pulls laughter out of you like a magnet. Ms. Reiter is equally good as Lotte, the mousy bureaucrat who unexpectedly finds in Lettice a kindred spirit. I don’t know whether she and Ms. Hodges have ever acted together before, but they’re definitely in tune, and their palpable rapport has much to do with the production’s appeal….

No link, of course (megasigh). If you care to read the whole thing, of which there is much, much more, go out and buy a copy of today’s Journal, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will provide you with immediate access to the full text of my review, along with Joe Morgenstern’s Pulitzer-winning film column and plenty of other worthy art-related copy.

In my next “Sightings” column, to be published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, I ask whether “safe art” (to borrow a phrase used recently by a friend of mine) is ever worth experiencing. My answer? You better believe it.

To find out what I have in mind, pick up a copy of tomorrow’s Journal, where you’ll find my column in the “Pursuits” section.

Envy is the lot of the unwealthy art collector. I picked up a price list at the opening of Hollis Taggart Galleries’ Arnold Friedman retrospective on Wednesday, and it reminded me that any hopes I have of owning one of Friedman’s oil paintings–even a very small one–are contingent on my selling Hotter Than That: A Life of Louis Armstrong to Hollywood, or something at least as implausible.

I returned home feeling both elated (having just looked at four roomfuls of exquisite paintings) and depressed (knowing that none of them would ever be mine). Then it occurred to me to see if any Friedman-related bargains were to be found on the Web. I searched for “Arnold Friedman lithograph,” and what did I find? This. A few more keystrokes revealed it to be a pencil-signed 1940 Friedman lithograph for sale by the Philadelphia Print Shop for the unlikely-sounding price of $225. “That I can afford,” I muttered hopefully, and fired off an e-mail asking if it was still available. Answer came there eight hours later, and now the latest addition to the Teachout Museum is en route to my door via UPS.

The moral? You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you just might find something (A) close enough for jazz and (B) a whole lot cheaper. And yes, I’m feeling incredibly smug….

My niece graduated from high school on Tuesday. I couldn’t be there, but I sent flowers, and spent the evening marveling at how time flies. Only yesterday she was a baby, and now she’s a tall, poised young lady about to go off to college. How can such things be?

I am immensely proud of Lauren Teachout, and of my brother and sister-in-law, who raised her right. Nothing I will ever do in my life will be as difficult–or honorable–as that.

“There has been a certain amount of self-deception in School of Paris art since the exit of cubism. In Pollock there is absolutely none, and he is not afraid to look ugly–all profoundly original art looks ugly at first.”

Clement Greenberg, The Nation, Apr. 7, 1945