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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for April 15, 2020

Introducing the Hilary Teachout Grant

April 15, 2020 by Terry Teachout

Part of the havoc wrought by the coronavirus is that artists of all kinds now find it increasingly and fearfully hard to pay their bills and stay afloat. To help them, the painter Makoto Fujimura and his International Arts Movement have launched the Hilary Teachout Grant, an emergency relief grant for performing and other artists. It is named after my beloved wife Hilary, who died on March 31. Hilary’s passionate love of all the arts was boundless—no audience ever had a more enthusiastic member—and it is deeply gratifying to me to know that this grant will honor her blessed memory.

As part of the ongoing fundraising effort to support the Hilary Teachout Grant, my old friend Mako has donated one of his much-admired indigo-ink-and-gold watercolors, which will go to the winner of a lottery open to those who donate $1,000 or more. Needless to say, though, contributions of any size are enthusiastically welcomed. I hope that those of you who have read in this space about Hilary’s long struggle with pulmonary hypertension, the rare disease that finally claimed her life, will consider making a tax-deductible donation.

To make a donation in Hilary’s name, or to apply for a grant, go here.

In the video below, Mako tells more about the Hilary Teachout Grant:

Sinatra on the podium

April 15, 2020 by Terry Teachout

In this week’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I discuss Frank Sinatra’s little-remembered career as a part-time orchestral conductor. Here’s an excerpt.

*  *  *

Most people think, with very good reason, that Frank Sinatra was the best popular singer, as well as the best interpreter of the Great American Songbook, who ever lived. Save for a few voice lessons, he was also self-taught and had no musical training of any kind, which makes it all the more remarkable that when not singing, he dabbled in conducting—and was singularly good at it, too….

Comparatively few of Sinatra’s latter-day fans, however, know about this side of his musical personality, for he was too modest about his conducting to regularly feature himself in that capacity. Fortunately, he did record seven albums as a conductor, one of which, Peggy Lee’s “The Man I Love,” is widely regarded as the finest record she ever made. In addition, he conducted on TV at least twice, in 1958 and 1980, and these clips, which have been uploaded to YouTube, will make clear to anyone who has played in an orchestra that Sinatra, trained or not, was fully in charge of the proceedings.

If you’re skeptical…well, you should be. Orchestral conducting simply isn’t an amateur’s game, especially when the amateur in question can’t even read music. But Sinatra did have the self-confidence necessary to persuade a roomful of hard-boiled professional instrumentalists to do his bidding, and many a well-paid symphonic conductor has skated by on scarcely more than that. As the violinist Carl Flesch observed, conducting is “the only musical activity in which a dash of charlatanism is not only harmless, but positively necessary.” More important, he also had an acutely sensitive ear, as well as the innate ability to use manual gestures to make his musical wishes known. Some have it, most don’t. Sinatra had it in spades: Like Arturo Toscanini, no sooner did he step onto a podium than he knew what to do….

*  *  *

Read the whole thing here.

“We’ll Be Together Again,” by Carl Fischer and Frankie Laine, performed by Frank Sinatra on The Frank Sinatra Show. This episode was originally telecast by ABC on May 9, 1958:

Sinatra leads the Columbia Chamber Ensemble in a performance of Alec Wilder’s Air for English Horn recorded in 1945. The soloist is Mitch Miller:

Peggy Lee sings “The Folks Who Live on the Hill,” by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, in 1957. The song was arranged by Nelson Riddle and the performance was conducted by Sinatra:

Snapshot: George Van Eps plays jazz guitar

April 15, 2020 by Terry Teachout

George Van Eps plays “The Boy Friend” and “I’ve Got a Crush on You” on his specially made seven-string electric guitar in a 1987 telecast:

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

Almanac: Shakespeare on mourning

April 15, 2020 by Terry Teachout

Yet one word more: grief boundeth where it falls,
Not with the empty hollowness, but weight:
I take my leave before I have begun,
For sorrow ends not when it seemeth done.

William Shakespeare, Richard II

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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