Archives for May 15, 2011

Ricky Riccardi, What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years (Pantheon, $28.95, out June 21). I can’t do any better than to repeat my dust-jacket blurb: “The later years of Louis Armstrong are one of the most fascinating untold tales in the history of jazz. What a Wonderful World is indispensable to anyone with a serious interest in the greatest jazz musician of the twentieth century.” If you liked Pops, you need to read this book (TT).

A Minister’s Wife (Mitzi Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center, closes June 12). The most important new musical since The Light in the Piazza, a near-operatic version of George Bernard Shaw’s Candida that improves on the original (TT).

Jane Freilicher: Recent Paintings and Prints (Tibor de Nagy, 724 Fifth Ave., up through June 3). Ten new paintings and works on paper–including an affordable color lithograph–by the American Bonnard, an artist of deceptive simplicity and uncanny sensitivity whose work grows ever more lyrical with each passing year (TT).