Archives for 2018

The Miles Davis Quintet plays Davis’ “So What.” The band consists of Davis on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums. This performance was originally telecast live by CBS on April 2, 1959, as part of “The Sound of Miles Davis,” an episode of The Robert Herridge Theater Show produced and introduced by Herridge and directed by Jack Smight. Davis had recorded “So What” for the first time a month earlier during the sessions for Kind of Blue:

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

“When a country produces a man of genius he is never what it wants or believes it wants; he is always unlike its idea of itself.”

W.B. Yeats, The Death of Synge: Extracts from a Diary Kept in 1909

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

“I thought of the perpetual desire of all lovers to talk of their love and how many lovers’ quarrels have come from it.”

W.B. Yeats, Estrangement: Extracts from a Diary Kept in 1909

New York City Ballet dances George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, choreographed in 1946 to a commissioned score by Paul Hindemith. The pianist is Gordon Boelzner and the soloists are Richard Rapp, Patricia Wilde, Arthur Mitchell, and Patricia Neary. This studio performance was originally telecast by the CBC in 1964 on L’Heure du Concert:

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

“Only the greatest obstacle that can be contemplated without despair rouses the will to full intensity.”

W.B. Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil

From 2008:

Unless you happen to own a newspaper, you don’t get to read your own obituary. And that’s probably as it should be. I’ve written some pretty sharp remarks about the recently deceased, after all, and I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody remembered them when my own time comes–or maybe not. Perhaps I’ll outlive my own minor renown and be remembered solely, as I once speculated in this space, for having owned a Max Beerbohm caricature. Would I want to know that now? Not really. I have a pretty good sense of irony, but I’m not sure it’s that robust….

Read the whole thing here.

“We begin to live when we have conceived life as tragedy.”

W.B. Yeats, The Trembling of the Veil