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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for May 25, 2016

In search of lost time

May 25, 2016 by Terry Teachout

436685_1200I just finished One-Man Band, the third volume of Simon Callow’s Orson Welles biography. It’s the first new book I’ve read from cover to cover since I got back from directing Satchmo at the Waldorf in Florida, and I savored every page of it, both because it’s so good and because I was deliriously happy to be reading for pleasure again. It happens that I chose to work on Satchmo and my second play (about which more in due course) without taking any time off from my regular Wall Street Journal duties. As a result, I was forced to go for a full month without reading or listening to anything not directly connected with the immediate tasks at hand. Is it any wonder that I immersed myself so joyously in Welles’ world as soon as Satchmo opened?

Now, at last, the pressure is off, and Mrs. T and I depart at midday for Connecticut, where I’ll finally have some time to myself. How will I spend it? For openers, I’ll start chipping away at two tall stacks of books and CDs that arrived in my mailbox in April and the first part of May.

The books, one new and the rest old, are:

modern5• William C. Agee’s Modern Art in America 1908-68

• Ana Castillo’s Peel My Love Like an Onion

• Robert W. Gutman’s Mozart: A Cultural Biography

• Victoria Price’s Vincent Price: A Daughter’s Biography

• Ashley H. Robins’ Oscar Wilde: The Great Drama of His Life

In addition, I have five as-yet-unread installments of Penguin’s uniform paperback edition of George Simenon’s Maigret mysteries: Cécile Is Dead, The Cellars of the Majestic, Inspector Cadaver, The Judge’s House, and Signed, Picpus.

And the CDs? They range, as is my wont, no less widely:

71GWI1LFKtL._SL1200_• Carla Bley’s Trios and Andando El Tiempo

• The Ry Cooder Anthology: The UFO Has Landed

• Bill Frisell’s When You Wish Upon a Star

• Pat Metheny’s The Unity Sessions

• The incomparable Marcelle Meyer’s 1954 recital of the piano music of Rossini

• John Scofield’s Past Present

That ought to hold me for a month or so, don’t you think?

* * *

Marcelle Meyer plays Rossini’s “Un sauté,” from Péchés de vieillesse:

Snapshot: Candid Camera goes to Moscow in 1961

May 25, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERACandid Camera pays a visit to Moscow at the height of the Cold War. This episode was originally telecast on CBS in October of 1961. To read about how it was made, go here. The hosts are Allen Funt and Durward Kirby:

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

Almanac: Eric Hoffer on totalitarianism and civility

May 25, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Some of the worst tyrannies of our day genuinely are ‘vowed’ to the service of mankind, yet can function only by pitting neighbor against neighbor. The all-seeing eye of a totalitarian regime is usually the watchful eye of the next-door neighbor.”

Eric Hoffer, The Ordeal of Change

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, ran earlier this season at New Orleans’ Le Petit Theatre. It previously closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, … [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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