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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for December 2016

Almanac: Eric Hoffer on kindness

December 23, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.”

Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind

Encore: Louis Armstrong reads “The Night Before Christmas”

December 22, 2016 by Terry Teachout

ENCORELouis Armstrong recites Clement Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas.” This was Armstrong’s last commercial recording. He made it at his home in Queens on February 26, 1971, five months before his death:

To learn more about the history of this recording, go here.

Almanac: Aldous Huxley on goodness

December 22, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.”

Aldous Huxley, Grey Eminence

Snapshot: Claudio Abbado performs Mozart’s “Laudate Dominum”

December 21, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERARachel Harnisch, Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic perform “Laudate Dominum,” a setting of Psalm 117 from Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de confessore, K. 339, performed in 1999 at Salzburg Cathedral during a memorial concert for Herbert von Karajan:

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

Almanac: J.M. Barrie on kindness

December 21, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?”

J. M. Barrie, The Little White Bird

Ten years after: on decorating a Christmas tree in adulthood

December 20, 2016 by Terry Teachout

LOOKBACKFrom 2006:

Why, then, did I never get around to putting up a tree of my own after I left home? The answer, I suppose, is that since I made a point of coming back to Smalltown, U.S.A., for the holidays each year, I never found it necessary. What began as a convenience hardened into habit, and by the time I was forty the notion of buying and decorating a Christmas tree seemed to me senseless. No doubt that said more about the confusion of my private life than it did about any domestic urges I was sweeping under the rug, but whatever my deeper reasons might have been, the fact remains that the tree I trimmed last week is the first one I’ve had in thirty-two years….

Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: Thoreau on goodness

December 20, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Just because: From Miracle on 34th Street, Santa Claus on the commercialization of Christmas

December 19, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAA scene from Miracle on 34th Street, written and directed by George Seaton, featuring Edmund Gwenn and Philip Tonge. The film was released in 1947:

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

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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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