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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for January 8, 2014

TT: Read all about it

January 8, 2014 by Terry Teachout

TBP_8115.JPGJazz pianist Ethan Iverson, whose work with the Bad Plus and on his own will be well known to longtime visitors to this space, recently interviewed me for his widely read and deservedly influential blog, Do the Math. We talked at length and in considerable detail about Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, as well as a variety of other subjects ranging from my recent efforts as a playwright and opera librettist to our shared admiration for Anthony Powell, Rex Stout, and Donald Westlake:

I think it’s very foolish to compare Westlake to Proust, as I’ve actually seen done in print. In the first place, it’s stupid–and in the second place, you don’t need to. Donald Westlake’s place in the history of literature is quite adequately secured by virtue of his having been Donald Westlake. He doesn’t have to be anything else.
This is true of jazz as well. An important secondary theme in my Ellington book is when classical musicians first discovered jazz and started writing about it. It matters. I don’t deprecate the significance of the fact that Constant Lambert, Percy Grainger and Aaron Copland understood what Ellington was early in his career. But some people think that in order to take Duke Ellington seriously as a composer, we have to believe that he was successful as a composer of large-scale works. The idea, I guess, is to push him up into the classical-music arena: he played in Carnegie Hall, therefore he’s serious. And that’s completely wrong. Duke Ellington is serious because he is Duke Ellington. He’s serious because of the work itself….

In addition to posting a carefully edited transcript of the interview, Ethan has also written an accompanying essay about Ellington called “Reverential Gesture” in which he discusses in a thoroughly civil manner his differences with some of the musical analysis in Duke, engaging with what I actually wrote in the book rather than caricaturing it. Unlike some of my less temperate critics, he read Duke closely–and took it seriously. I expected no less.
You can read both the interview and the essay by going here.

TT: Snapshot

January 8, 2014 by Terry Teachout

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli plays Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

TT: Almanac

January 8, 2014 by Terry Teachout

“During dinner we played CD of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32–for me the greatest piece of music I know. Life, death, all turmoils, sorrows and happinesses seem to be resolved whenever I hear it.”
Alec Guinness, My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor

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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