Archives for December 14, 2006

What’s the bottom line on the new Thomas Harris novel, Hannibal Rising?

Readers who are expecting another Silence of the Lambs or Red Dragon are going to hurl this book across the room in anger.

That’s all I needed to know. Thanks, Crime Fiction Dossier (via Jenny D.)!

Blast from the past: I reported on rereading Red Dragon and learning all manner of unexpected stuff here (some links have expired).

Everybody I know who plays jazz for a living was sickened–no other word is strong enough–to learn of the death of Kenny Davern, who was struck down without warning on Tuesday by a heart attack. He was seventy-one, not so old for a jazzman, and not nearly old enough for so pungently individual a player.

The New York Times, which isn’t always sound on such matters, gave Davern a good sendoff this morning, describing him as “a radically traditional jazz clarinetist and soprano saxophonist whose liquid tones linked him to the classical sound of New Orleans but who could also play free jazz.” I’m told that he was, or could be, a difficult person, but his many friends are quick to add that he was worth the trouble, and then some.

Dan Morgenstern, who knew Davern for a half-century, called him “a master of his chosen art and craft” when he heard the bad news. You can see and hear his artistry by going here. If that clip piques your interest, I suggest you order what I gather was Davern’s own favorite of the many albums on which he played, Dick Wellstood and His All-Star Orchestra Featuring Kenny Davern, recorded for Chiaroscuro in 1973. The title is a characteristically Wellstoodian joke, for the “orchestra” in question consisted solely and only of Davern on soprano saxophone and Wellstood on piano, both of whom were, as usual, in scorchingly fine form. The liner notes, unlikely as it may sound, are by William F. Buckley, Jr., and they end with this magisterial pronouncement about the All-Star Orchestra: “I hope you like it. If you don’t, I’m sorry about that; sorry about you.”

It is at times like these that I bless the name of Thomas Edison, and recall Shakespeare’s words: Death makes no conquest of this conqueror,/For now he lives in fame though not in life. Thanks to the invention of the phonograph and its successor technologies, we no longer need settle for the fading memories of those lucky enough to have heard the great musicians of the past in person. We can hear them ourselves, and know that they were as good as their reputations (or not).

This unprecedented capacity to preserve the passing moment has been of special importance when it comes to an improvised music like jazz. As I wrote in Fi a number of years ago, “Without the phonograph, jazz might well have vanished into the humid night air of New Orleans, to be remembered only by those who first played and heard it; instead, it became America’s principal contribution to twentieth-century music, known around the world.” So, too, might Kenny Davern’s playing have been forgotten. I’m glad we have it to comfort us today.

UPDATE: The London Independent ran an excellent Davern obit written by British jazz critic Steve Voce.

I just got back from a musical performed in a very small off-Broadway theater. One of my fellow playgoers, an older man seated one row ahead of me, was drunk–very, very happily so. He talked through most of the songs, then clapped loudly (and prematurely) when they were over, whooping and hollering for good measure. On more than one occasion he sang along with the performers, some of whom who were no more than fifteen feet from his aisle seat.

He was, in short, a nuisance and an embarrassment, and a half-dozen of his neighbors tried without success to shut him up. So did the director of the show, an exceedingly nice woman who tiptoed down the aisle midway through the second act and shushed him, to no avail whatsoever.

Needless to say, I would have been delighted to do to this man what I was momentarily tempted to do to the talkative woman with whom I shared a tram at Storm King Art Center this summer. (Alas, I neglected to bring the necessary equipment to the theater.) Yet I found the haughty dudgeon of the playgoers who chatted about the poor fellow at intermission to be slightly out of keeping with his actual behavior. Of course he was being rude–spectacularly so–but there was something innocent about his rudeness, exasperating though it was, if only because he was so obviously enjoying the show. Once it became apparent that nothing short of a baseball bat would silence him, I gave in to the situation and decided not to let myself get bent out of shape by it. Nor did I.

On the way home I remembered a story told by Mel Torm

The New York Times led off its annual list
of notable classical recordings of the year with this determinedly optimistic passage:

The year brought more talk of doom and gloom for the classical recording industry, or at least its CD wing. Yet recordings continue to stream out from new sources as well as from major labels in retrenchment or recovery. And many of them are truly excellent.

That is not what I call encouraging, and neither is the list. Except for the reissues–which include such familiar, regularly recycled fare as Wanda Landowska’s Bach recordings–I haven’t heard anything on it. What’s more, only one of the new recordings, a soon-to-be-released live performance by the late, lamented Lorraine Hunt Lieberson of her husband Peter’s Neruda Songs, piqued my interest in the slightest. A Beethoven symphony cycle by Bernard Haitink? An original-instrument Eine kleine Nachtmusik? Krystian Zimerman’s second recording of the Brahms D Minor Concerto? Still more John Adams and Philip Glass?

Don’t get me wrong, please. I love classical music with all my heart and soul–but I have no love whatsoever for the current and final incarnation of the classical recording industry, which has been committing slow suicide for the past decade and more. As I wrote in “Life Without Records,” the essay reprinted in A Terry Teachout Reader in which I summed up the decline and fall of a great industry:

Now, after a quarter-century of Donnys and Barrys and Dannys and Zubies–of crossover and the Three Tenors and a hundred different recorded versions of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, each one duller than the last–the classical recording industry appears to be on its last legs. Nor will it die alone. Hard though it may be to imagine life without records and record stores, it is only a matter of time, and not much of it, before they disappear–and notwithstanding the myriad pleasures which the major labels have given us in the course of their century-long existence, it is at least possible that the 21st century will be better off without them.

To be sure, this prospect is understandably disturbing to many older musicians and music lovers, given the fact that the record album has played so pivotal a role in the culture of postwar music. Nor do I claim that life without records will necessarily be better–or worse. It will merely be different, just as the lives of actors were irrevocably changed by the invention of the motion-picture camera in ways that no one could possibly have foreseen in 1900. But one thing is already clear: unlike art museums and opera houses, records serve a purpose that technology has rendered obsolete.

I think of those words each time I walk past Tower Records’ soon-to-be-shuttered Lincoln Center outlet. What will our lives be like without record stores? This is something I have written about, most recently in a “Sightings” column about the impending demise of Tower Records:

I’ve spent countless happy hours trolling the aisles of Tower Records in search of buried treasure. Yet when amazon.com and iTunes made it possible for me to buy any album I wanted without leaving my apartment, I didn’t think twice about turning my back on Tower. As a wise old department-store owner once told Peter Drucker, “There is no customer loyalty that two cents off can’t overcome.”

Is the narrowly targeted buying-on-demand facilitated by online stores creating a world in which consumers are less likely to try new things? Perhaps–but the infinitely deep catalogs of these stores also make it possible for the curious listener to range farther afield than ever before. Only last week I saw the Signature Theatre Company’s production of August Wilson’s “Seven Guitars,” in which a catchy tune called “Joe Louis Was a Fighting Man” is played between scenes. No sooner did I get home from the show than I went straight to iTunes, learned that the song was recorded by a gospel quartet called the Dixieaires and downloaded it to my iPod on the spot.

Yes, I miss the good old days of browsing, the same way I miss the big black manual typewriter that used to sit on my desk. Both had their advantages, just as online buying has its disadvantages. All blessings are mixed–but that doesn’t make them any less blessed.

I got a lot of mail about that column, much of it frankly disapproving. So be it: there is plenty of room in the world for principled disagreement. But I don’t think there can be any serious disagreement about the fact that the great cultural shift I predicted in “Life Without Records” (and on numerous prior occasions) is now taking place. For better and worse, the Age of the Album is over, and we must come to terms with its passing.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

– Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

– A Chorus Line* (musical, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

– Company* (musical, PG-13/R, adult subject matter and situations, reviewed here)

– The Drowsy Chaperone* (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)

– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)

– The Vertical Hour* (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Apr. 1)

– Voyage (The Coast of Utopia, part 1)* (drama, G, too intellectually complex to be suitable for children of any age, reviewed here, extended through May 12)

OFF BROADWAY:

– The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children old enough to enjoy a love story, reviewed here)

– Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)

– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here, closes Jan. 14)

– Two Trains Running (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, extended through Jan. 28)

CLOSING SUNDAY:

– Heartbreak House* (drama, G/PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON:

– The Wedding Singer (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here, closes Dec. 31)

“An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark–that is critical genius.”

Billy Wilder, interview, BBC2 (January 24, 1992)