Lauren Braun Costello and Russell Reich, Notes on Cooking: A Short Guide to an Essential Craft (RCR Creative Press, $21.95). I can barely boil water, but I know an immensely informative guide when I read one, and this one fills the bill. Fans of Reich’s Notes on Directing, among whom I number myself, will recall the drill: Notes on Cooking is a 143-page list of 217 dos and don’ts for cooks, aspiring and otherwise. Some are starkly practical (“Fish should not smell”) and others subtly suggestive (“Embrace the mundane”). The advice–I’m told–is sound, the writing crisp, the design pleasing to the eye. Stuff a stocking or two with this one, and buy another for yourself (TT).

Pilobolus Dance Theatre (Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., July 13-Aug. 8). The annual summer season of everybody’s favorite…what? Pilobolus remains a pigeonhole-resistant fusion of modern dance, gymnastics, performance art, wit, and charm. Three New York premieres this time around, plus the usual assortment of repertory staples, including “Day Two,” “Pseudopodia,” and “Walklyndon.” Prepare to be delighted (TT).

Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Steve Swallow, and Antonio Sanchez, Quartet Live (Concord Jazz). A 2007 reunion date by three of the most influential jazz-rock instrumentalists of the post-Coltrane era, with Sanchez providing ideal support on drums. The tunes include Metheny’s “Midwestern Night’s Dream” and Swallow’s “Falling Grace” and the playing is exquisite. Excellent liner notes by all four musicians. Need I say more? (TT)

A Minister’s Wife (Writers’ Theatre, 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe, Ill., closes Aug. 2). Josh Schmidt, Austin Pendleton, and Jan Tranen have teamed up to create a musical version of George Bernard Shaw’s Candida that’s better than the original. The score is exquisite, the book crisp and pointed, the lyrics plain-spoken yet poignant. The ensemble cast, led by Kevin Gudahl, is excellent in every way, and Michael Halberstam’s staging is wonderfully sensitive. A perfect show, in short, one that is surely destined to make its way to New York–but why wait? You’ll never see it done better than in Chicagoland (TT).

Emerson String Quartet, Intimate Letters (DGG). Leos Janacek’s two quartets, the first inspired by Tolstoy’s “Kreutzer Sonata” and the second by his own complex relationship with the married woman who was the muse of his old age, rank high among the masterpieces of modern classical music. Now the Emerson Quartet has recorded its vibrant, incisive interpretations of both works in an album that serves as a perfect companion piece to the group’s classic 1988 integral version of the Bartók quartets (TT).

The History Boys (TimeLine Theater, 615 W. Wellington, Chicago, extended through Sept. 27). This Windy City production of Alan Bennett’s play about a group of English public-school prodigies and the teacher (Donald Brearley) who loves certain of them not wisely but too well is arguably superior to the original National Theatre production that played on Broadway in 2006, and has the overwhelming advantage of being performed in a very small theater (eighty-seven seats) in which the splendid performances of the ensemble cast can come through with breathtaking clarity. Worth the trip–no matter where you’re coming from (TT).

The Collage Aesthetic of Louis Armstrong: “In the Cause of Happiness” (Peter Jay Sharp Arcade, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at 60th St., up through Sept. 26). Now that a book of Louis Armstrong’s collages has been published, a growing number of music lovers are becoming aware that the greatest jazz musician of the twentieth century was also a gifted amateur artist who decorated the boxes that held his reel-to-reel tape collection and the walls of his New York home with colorful scissors-and-Scotch-tape assemblages of newspaper and magazine clippings whose freely associational quality recalls the “visionary art” of untrained painters. Jazz at Lincoln Center is currently mounting an exhibition of large-scale reproductions of Armstrong’s collages, and a selection of the fragile one-of-a-kind originals will also be on view at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens through July 12. Both shows offer a fascinating glimpse of a little-known aspect of Armstrong’s proliferating creativity (TT).

The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-1946) (Mosaic, seven CDs). Most jazz critics regard the late Twenties and early Thirties as Satchmo’s peak years, but a vocal and steadily growing minority begs to differ. This box set will give them plenty of ammunition. Armstrong had simplified and purified his flamboyant style by the time he signed with Decca in 1935, and no apologies of any kind need be made for the recordings he made with his big band and a delightfully wide variety of guest artists, including Sidney Bechet, Bing Crosby and the Mills Brothers. Put on “2:19 Blues,” “Darling Nellie Gray,” “Ev’ntide,” “Jodie Man,” “Jubilee,” “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue,” or “Wolverine Blues” and you’ll get the point instantly. Many of these 78 sides are comparatively unfamiliar, and all have been digitally remastered to gorgeous effect. Dan Morgenstern’s liner notes deserve a Grammy, or maybe a Nobel Prize. This one’s a must, and then some (TT).