Archives for May 2006

“Critical Edge,” ArtsJournal’s group blog on the future of criticism in the age of new media, continues to percolate vigorously. Here’s a snippet from my latest posting:

A critic who holds himself at arm’s length from the artistic community whose activities he covers is a eunuch in the harem….

Go here to join the fray.

Lileks read my recent posting on The Birth of a Nation, and had this reaction:

The inexhaustible Teachout on Monday had a few notes about silent movies, and how they don’t speak to him. One of those instances of art that’s lost its language, even though the genre remains. Me, I love the stuff, but I understand the impatience, and sometimes I find myself enjoying the films not as a drama or comedy but an unintentional documentary. What suburban street is that? Is that sapling now a towering oak? Who belongs to those ghostly faces that slide past in the streetcar, and what became of them? Is everything in this image of a city street now gone? Surely inside those windows were men and women going about their lives, chewing on a pencil, digesting a sandwich, worried about a lump or a lover, wishing the person on the phone would shut up so they could use the lav.

It’s like getting a satellite photo of ancient Rome–it would tell us so much, but it would leave out 99 percent of what we really want to know.

But that one percent still tantalizes and teaches, doesn’t it? If nothing else, it tells you what people found funny or sad or shocking….

I think about such things all the time when watching old movies, with or without sound. Even when they’re not especially artful–perhaps especially when they’re not–they are through-a-glass-darkly windows on the past. Every film shot on location, whether in whole or in part, is a home movie in which bits and pieces of history are embedded, and I find myself growing increasingly fascinated by these snippets of lost time. I can’t watch North by Northwest, for instance, without thinking about how Grand Central Station has (and hasn’t) changed, or how the Plaza Hotel will never be again as it was.

This is, I suspect, as much a function of my increasing age as anything else. Just the other day, for instance, Backstage Books sent me a copy of the newly revised and updated edition of James Gavin’s Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret. (It’ll be out May 31.) The earlier edition was one of my favorite books, but I found this version even more interesting, in part because it’s the first time I’ve read a work of history in which someone I used to know well figures prominently. That sort of thing doesn’t start happening to you until you’ve achieved a certain degree of seniority, and I’m there.

The person I knew was, of course, Nancy LaMott, whose all-too-brief reign as the shooting star of cabaret in Manhattan began a few years after the publication in 1991 of Intimate Nights. Alas, I missed out on the scuffling that Nancy endured so bravely and Gavin describes so vividly. I didn’t meet her until the spring of 1994, by which time she was already singing at Tavern on the Green and the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel. I entered her life just in time for us to become close friends, though, and our friendship endured until her death in December of 1995, a few weeks after the release of her last studio album, Listen to My Heart.

I’ve written about Nancy more than once, both on this blog and in a 1996 essay collected in A Terry Teachout Reader. So far as I know, Intimate Nights is the only other book in which Nancy is mentioned, and it was a strange, almost disorienting sensation to read about her in someone else’s words:

Nancy LaMott seemed like such a delicate bird that one wondered when she might break. A waiflike, all-American blonde, she sang with the earnestness of a lovestruck teenager who was smiling through tears. People wanted to take her in their arms and protect her–especially when they learned that her struggle for recognition coincided with her fight against Crohn’s disease, an intestinal disorder with horribly debilitating side effects. It had struck her in her teens, and would take her life in 1995, when she was forty-three. By then she had recorded six CDs, sung at the White House, and appeared on Regis & Kathie Lee. All this, through her no-frills singing of standards. In LaMott’s [New York] Times obituary, Stephen Holden would remember her as “a singularly unaffected voice…in a field typified by showy histrionics.”

All true, though I never thought of her as “delicate,” perhaps because we shared so many meals. (She knew her way around a kitchen.) Nancy was much tougher than she looked. Still, Gavin has gotten her right in every other particular, which is hugely important, since his revised version of Intimate Nights, which ends in 2005, will undoubtedly replace the first edition as the standard history of cabaret in New York.

It is, as I say, exceedingly strange to read about an old friend in the kind of book that can properly be described as a “standard history,” if only because no book, however detailed, can tell the whole story of a human being. History, like biography, is an attempt to tell that which can only be remembered. I know a great deal more about Nancy than you’ll find in Intimate Nights, including certain things you won’t read in anything I’ve written about her. I might share them with a biographer someday, or I might not. I just watched a PBS documentary about John Ford and John Wayne, who once made a film together in which one of the characters famously declares that “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” I wouldn’t go that far–I am, after all, a serial biographer myself–but I don’t think the public has an absolute right to know everything about anyone, no matter who they were or how important they might have been.

Be that as it may, I’m glad that James Gavin did such a good job of sketching Nancy’s essential character, though it goes without saying that I don’t need to read about my old friend in order to bring her immediately to mind. Stephen Sondheim wrote a song about the persistence of memory called, appropriately enough, “Not a Day Goes By.” Nancy recorded it a couple of years before she died, and I listen to her performance from time to time, trying whenever I do to imagine all the years of friendship her death stole from me:

As the days go by,
I keep thinking, “When does it end?
Where’s the day I’ll have started forgetting?”
But I just go on
Thinking and sweating
And cursing and crying
And turning and reaching
And waking and dying
And no,
Not a day goes by,
Not a blessed day
But you’re still somewhere part of my life
And you won’t go away.

I’m old enough now to know how true that is.

Ten things I haven’t done in 2006:

– I haven’t bought a copy of an ink-on-paper magazine or newspaper.

– I haven’t watched a first-run episode of a TV series.

– I haven’t been to a movie theater (though I’m planning to break my fast by seeing Art School Confidential).

– I haven’t rented a DVD.

– I haven’t read a new novel.

– I haven’t seen a ballet.

– I haven’t been to an orchestra concert.

– I haven’t written a book review.

– I haven’t gone to a party.

– I haven’t visited my home town.

Not yet, anyway.

“Anybody can write a short story–a bad one, I mean–who has industry and paper and time enough; but not every one may hope to write even a bad novel. It is the length that kills.”

Robert Louis Stevenson, “My First Book: Treasure Island” (courtesy of Kate’s Book Blog)

This year’s Tony Award nominations were just announced. Here are the major categories. My personal picks are in bold, followed by my predictions:

– BEST PLAY:

Rabbit Hole

Shining City

The History Boys

The Lieutenant of Inishmore

I’m not with the majority on this one: The History Boys is a sure thing.

– BEST MUSICAL:

Jersey Boys

The Color Purple

The Drowsy Chaperone

The Wedding Singer

A tough call. My guess, though, is that Jersey Boys will beat out The Drowsy Chaperone, if only because it’s the only crowd-pleasing superhit of the season that also got good reviews, my furious pan excepted. (The Drowsy Chaperone is doing very well, too, but it’s so idiosyncratic that critics and theater buffs are sharply divided over its merits.)

– BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY:

Awake and Sing!

Faith Healer

Seascape

The Constant Wife

An easy call: Faith Healer has this category sewed up tight. (Yo, where’s The Odd Couple? Do I detect a whiff of Lane-Broderick-Mantello backlash among the electorate?)

– BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL:

Sweeney Todd

The Pajama Game

The Threepenny Opera

Oh, wow, beats me. Sweeney Todd was definitely the critics’ choice, but then we all loved The Pajama Game, too. If I had to bet on the winner, I’d probably go for Sweeney Todd, but I wouldn’t put up a whole lot of money either way.

– BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY:

Ralph Fiennes, Faith Healer

Richard Griffiths, The History Boys

Zeljko Ivanek, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial

Oliver Platt, Shining City

David Wilmot, The Lieutenant of Inishmore

Probably Fiennes, but Griffiths is a contender, and should be.

– BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A PLAY:

Kate Burton, The Constant Wife

Judy Kaye, Souvenir

Lisa Kron, Well

Cynthia Nixon, Rabbit Hole

Lynn Redgrave, The Constant Wife

This is the weakest category overall, though Cynthia Nixon will doubtless win for all sorts of reasons, none of them relevant. (Note the conspicuous absence of J-l– R-b-rts from the roster.)

– BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL:

Michael Cerveris, Sweeney Todd

Harry Connick, Jr., The Pajama Game

Stephen Lynch, The Wedding Singer

Bob Martin, The Drowsy Chaperone

John Lloyd Young, Jersey Boys

No contest–it’s Connick. Sometimes star power counts, and sometimes it should, if not necessarily in this case. (Martin’s performance is delightful, but it’s a non-singing part.)

– BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL:

La Chanze, The Color Purple

Sutton Foster, The Drowsy Chaperone

Patti LuPone, Sweeney Todd

Kelli O’Hara, The Pajama Game

Chita Rivera, Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life

Everyone was good, the first three nominees exceptionally so. I can see La Chanze winning, if only because none of the voters will want to shut out so successful and Oprah-certified a show, lame though it was. (Me, I would have given it to Nellie McKay for The Threepenny Opera.)

– BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL:

Samuel Barnett, The History Boys

Domhnall Gleeson, The Lieutenant of Inishmore

Ian McDiarmid, Faith Healer

Mark Ruffalo, Awake and Sing!

Pablo Schreiber, Awake and Sing!

McDiarmid had the better part, but Ruffalo is deserving, too. Not to worry–his time will come.

– BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A PLAY:

Tyne Daly, Rabbit Hole

Frances de la Tour, The History Boys

Jane Houdyshell, Well

Alison Pill, The Lieutenant of Inishmore

Zo

I flew the coop last Wednesday morning, having seen too many plays and feeling the urgent need to be somewhere else. By mid-afternoon I was sitting on the terrace of Ecce Bed and Breakfast in Barryville, a microscopic river town not far from the spot where New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania meet. Longtime readers may recall my previous visit to this refuge, located on a wooded bluff some three hundred feet above the Delaware River. It’s one of the most relaxing places I know: the scenery is gorgeous, the hosts considerate, the food delicious, the décor not even slightly chintzy. Rarely is a B&B as satisfying as its Web site so enticingly promises, but every time I go to Ecce, it turns out to be even better than advertised.

What did I do there? Just about nothing. I listened to music, I read Alice Goldfarb Marquis’ Art Czar: The Rise and Fall of Clement Greenberg and Elijah Wald’s Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, I watched a bald eagle swoop lazily over the river, and I drove to Narrowsburg, another small town fifteen minutes up the road, where I ate a superlative dinner at a brand-new restaurant that I commend to your attention. Peter Schott, the chef and owner of Restaurant 15 Main, used to cook in Manhattan but has now set up shop in the country, where he turns out such sumptuous dishes as green garlic soup with frogs’ legs and the best gnocchi I’ve ever tasted, the latter accompanied by locally grown, lightly sauteed fiddlehead ferns. Yum. (The 15 Main Web site is still under construction, but should you find yourself anywhere near Narrowsburg, call 845-252-6562 to make a reservation. You won’t be sorry.)

I would have been content to spend the rest of the week driving between Barryville and Narrowsburg. Instead I returned to New York on Friday afternoon, unpacked my bags, and headed for Joe’s Pub, where Deidre Rodman and Steve Swallow were celebrating the release of Twin Falls, their new CD, with a gig at which they played so beautifully that I wasn’t sorry to have come back home. When not making pellucidly lyrical music with Swallow or her own quintet, Rodman is the pianist for the Lascivious Biddies, about whom I’ve written from time to time in this space (as well as in my liner notes for their latest CD, Get Lucky). All three of her fellow Biddies showed up to cheer Rodman on, and I was as pleased to see them again as I was to hear her.

The next morning I awoke at nine-thirty and remembered that two museum shows I’d been meaning to see, Goya at the Frick Collection and David Smith at the Guggenheim, were about to close. I threw my clothes on, jumped in a cab, and went straight to the Frick, where I found a line of hopeful art lovers stretching halfway around the block. The word on the street was that I’d have to wait two hours to get in. Not caring to fritter away so pretty a morning in so tiresome a fashion, I walked up Fifth Avenue to the Guggenheim, where I stood in line for fifteen seconds before being admitted.

Needless to say, David Smith isn’t as popular as Goya, nor do I claim to like his welded-metal abstract-expressionist sculptures as much as Goya’s paintings. In fact, I’ve never liked Smith very much at all, but most of my fellow critics think him a master, so I felt obliged to take him on yet again, though I didn’t change my mind this time around. Except for the “Cubis” sculptures, which rarely fail to bowl me over, I continue to find most of Smith’s work a fussy, derivative amalgam of surrealism and ill-digested biomorphism (though I did like Steel Drawing I, one of the smaller pieces in the show, very much). So be it. You can’t like everything that’s good, and you shouldn’t pretend to like anything. In the wise words of Kingsley Amis, “All amateurs must be philistines part of the time. Must be: a greater sin is to be coerced into showing respect when little or none is felt.”

I left the Guggenheim with my bell unrung, crossed Fifth Avenue, and plunged into Central Park, where the Great Lawn was packed with ecstatic children taking advantage of a lovely day. No show tonight! I told myself happily, and took my sweet time strolling home.

Here are the CDs I took with me on my trip to Barryville:

– The Best of Blind Blake (Yazoo)

– Whiskey Is My Habit, Good Women Is All I Crave: The Best of Leroy Carr (Columbia/Legacy)

– Paul Desmond, Pure Desmond (CTI)

– Donald Fagen, Morph the Cat (Reprise)

– Lyle Lovett, Joshua Judges Ruth (MCA/Curb)

– Mitchell’s Christian Singers, Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, Vol. 1: 1934-1936 (Document)

– Weslia Whitfield, Lucky to Be Me (Landmark)

If you’ve never heard of Mitchell’s Christian Singers–and most people haven’t–go here to read what an anonymous critic for Time wrote about them in 1939. It is, not surprisingly, more than a little bit condescending, but I bet it’ll pique your curiosity anyway.

In my biweekly “Sightings” column, which appeared in the “Pursuits” section of Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, I played Bill Safire avant la lettre–sort of:

Not long ago I was chatting with three gifted musicians who were looking for a new way to describe what they do. All are widely thought of as “jazz musicians,” even though that venerable phrase is no longer a good fit for the increasingly uncategorizable music they make. Luciana Souza, who came to this country from Brazil, sings everything from bossa nova to American pop standards to her own settings of the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and Pablo Neruda. Maria Schneider leads a big band for which she writes large-scale compositions structured along classical lines into which she weaves flamenco, Latin American music and jazz improvisation. Theo Bleckmann is an uncompromisingly avant-garde vocalist whose latest album, “Las Vegas Rhapsody: The Night They Invented Champagne,” is a collection of show tunes accompanied by the Basel Chamber Orchestra.

How do you sum up such artists in a well-chosen word or two? You don’t–and that’s one of the problems with which they grapple as they try to find an audience for their music. This is why I was so struck when one of the three musicians (I can’t remember who) casually used the phrase “shuffle play” in an attempt to describe the stylistic multiplicity of their work. The others agreed at once: That’s what they do.

I wouldn’t have been nearly as impressed by their on-the-spot consensus were it not for the fact that I’d already heard the same phrase used in the same way by other artists of like inclination. Suddenly it hit me: I’d been watching a new cultural metaphor take shape….

The new music I have in mind isn’t random, but it definitely goes out of its way to take the listener in surprising directions. The Bad Plus, for instance, specializes in bracingly quirky jazz versions of such decidedly unjazzy tunes as Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and the theme from “Chariots of Fire.” Nickel Creek plays bluegrass-flavored music that owes as much to the synthesized technopop of Radiohead as it does to the high, lonesome sound of Bill Monroe. “Observatory,” Julia Dollison‘s debut CD, contains songs by Jerome Kern, Duke Ellington and Rufus Wainwright, sung in a richly imaginative, pigeonhole-eluding style that lies somewhere in the no-man’s-land separating jazz from pop.

Michael John LaChiusa’s See What I Wanna See and Adam Guettel’s The Light in the Piazza are operalike “musicals” whose kaleidoscopic scores reflect their composers’ passions for an extraordinarily wide variety of music. Osvaldo Golijov writes “classical” music into which he stirs Afro-Cuban percussion, gospel-style choral writing, even the keening wail of a klezmer clarinet.

What to call this new kind of music-making? At first glance it resembles postmodernism, but the self-consciously wide-ranging eclecticism of postmodern artists is always tinged with irony, whereas the musicians of whom I’m thinking embrace many different styles in a wholehearted way that has nothing in common with the cool detachment of the postmodernist. Their new approach thus requires a new label, and “shuffle-play music” might be in the early stages of catching on….

No link, so if you want to read the whole thing–of which there’s a good deal more–I suggest you avail yourself of one of these alternatives:

(1) Head for the nearest library, where you’ll find a copy of the Saturday Journal and (presumably) a comfy chair.

(2) Subscribe to the Online Journal by going here. Doing so will give you immediate access to the full text of this week’s “Sightings” column, plus a plethora of other good stuff.