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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for June 7, 2017

On my nightstand

June 7, 2017 by Terry Teachout

I’ve lately been reading, or am about to read, an oddly sorted but wholly characteristic stack of books. In addition to Stuart Isacoff’s When the World Stopped to Listen: Van Cliburn’s Cold War Triumph, and Its Aftermath, about which I wrote in last week’s Wall Street Journal, the list includes:

• Richard Aldous, Tunes of Glory: The Life of Malcolm Sargent

• Michael Cannell, Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, The Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Profiling

• Rich Cohen, Sweet and Low: A Family Story

• William Daniels, There I Go Again: How I Came to Be Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Craig, KITT, and Many Others

• Garrett M. Graff, Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die

• Bernard MacMahon, American Epic: The First Time America Heard Itself

• Terence Rattigan, Plays: French Without Tears, The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version, Harlequinade

• Michael Slowik, After the Silents: Hollywood Film Music in the Early Sound Era, 1926-1934

• Hilary Spurling, Matisse the Master: The Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954

• Gordon Thomas, Ruin from the Air: The Enola Gay’s Atomic Mission to Hiroshima

• James Q. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law

The absence of novels from this list isn’t surprising. I see so many plays as part of my job that I tend to look elsewhere for mental diversion after hours. Conversely, it’s perfectly natural that I should read a lot about music and art, those being two of my main interests. But…criminal profiling? Nuclear warfare? Nazi race law? Artificial sweeteners? From whence cometh the desire to know more about such varied things?

All I can tell you is that I’ve read like this my whole life long, and see no reason to change my ways in late middle age. I wouldn’t be a sometime playwright, after all, were I not prepared to follow my nose wherever it may lead me. I’ve always been curious about most things under the sun, and I’m willing to try just about anything that doesn’t require manual skill (I can hang a picture quite nicely, but that’s about it).

At any rate, these are some of the things with which I’m preoccupied this month, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you hear more about some of them in due course. Or not: I like to learn about stuff purely for its own sake. But either way, that’s what I’m reading on my summer non-vacation.

* * *

Maybelle and Sara Carter perform together on a 1970 episode of The Johnny Cash Show. The performance of “I’ll Be Satisfied” heard on this clip was shown on American Epic: The First Time America Heard Itself:

Snapshot: Louis Armstrong performs at Disneyland

June 7, 2017 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERALouis Armstrong performs on Disneyland’s Mark Twain Riverboat, accompanied by Kid Ory on trombone and Johnny St. Cyr on banjo, both of whom played with Armstrong in the Twenties on his original Hot Five recordings. This film clip was originally telecast by NBC on Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color on April 15, 1962:

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

Almanac: Philip Glass on style

June 7, 2017 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“What I learnt from studying with Nadia Boulanger was that personal style was a special case of technique, the predilection one has to voice chords or manipulate instrumentation in certain ways. But this predilection lies within a larger framework of technique, and I tell young composers that without learning technique, they’ll never have a style.”

Philip Glass, interviewed by Jed Distler (Gramophone, February 20, 2017)

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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