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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for March 21, 2017

Ten years after: on hearing a nineteenth-century folksinger

March 21, 2017 by Terry Teachout

LOOKBACKFrom 2007:

In 1908 Percy Grainger persuaded the Gramophone Company to record Joseph Taylor in the studio. It was the first time that the voice of a “Genuine Peasant Folksinger” (as the label described Taylor in its promotional material) had ever been commercially recorded for posterity. Taylor didn’t much care for the process, claiming that singing into an acoustical horn was “lahk singin’ with a muzzle on,” but that didn’t stop him from doing his best. He cut a dozen songs, of which nine were released….

Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: Jean Renoir on the impersonality of great art

March 21, 2017 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“I believe that a production should be based on feeling—again, on the idea of communion. I mean a communion among the artist, the actors, the audience, and the wider world. After all, when you listen to great music—let’s say a piece by Mozart—it’s a direct conversation that you’re having with him. Mozart is sitting there in a chair, you’re sitting next to him, and you proceed to have a talk—in a musical language that is pleasant and even moving. And I believe that the less Mozart or any artist talks about himself, the more, finally, he gives of himself in communal terms.”

Jean Renoir, interviewed by Gideon Bachmann (Contact, June 1960)

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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