Louis Armstrong, Rudy Vallee’s Fleischmann’s Yeast Show & Louis’ Home-Recorded Tapes (Jazz Society, two CDs). Don’t be thrown by the elephantine title–this is the most important historical release of the decade. The first CD consists of previously unreleased 1937 airchecks from NBC’s Harlem Radio Review, the first variety series ever to be hosted by a black, in which Louis Armstrong and the Luis Russell band play as though the world were ending. The band never sounded remotely as hot as this on its commercial sides for Decca, and Armstrong is in full-tilt knock-’em-dead mode. The second CD consists of fascinating snippets from Armstrong’s private stash of postwar reel-to-reel after-hours recordings, the same tapes on which I drew in writing Rhythm Man. Absolutely not to be missed under any circumstances whatsoever (TT).

Diebenkorn in New Mexico (Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St. NW, Washington, D.C., up through Sunday). If you haven’t yet seen this important show of abstract paintings and works on paper, don’t delay–it closes this weekend. Richard Diebenkorn created these works when he lived in Albuquerque from 1950 to 1952, and the best of them suggest with uncanny exactitude the austere yet wrenchingly vivid New Mexico landscape (TT).

Cy Walter, Rodgers Revisited: Cy Walter Plays Richard Rodgers Compositions (Collectables). Two years after I heralded the first CD reissue of the long-forgotten recordings of Cy Walter, the man who turned cocktail piano into an art, a sequel has finally come along. Walters’ 1956 recital of thirteen songs by Richard Rodgers, originally released by Atlantic, is as suave and elegant a display of piano playing as has ever been committed to disc–but don’t be fooled by the high gloss. Alec Wilder said in his original liner notes that “anyone who has heard his own songs played by Cy immediately has a greater respect for his own work….though utterly respectful of the composers and songwriters whose music he plays, he is also highly complex both rhythmically and harmonically in his interpretations of their music, all the while maintaining a constant balance of delicacy and sensitiveness.” Listen to “The Gentleman is a Dope” and you’ll hear what Wilder meant. More, please! (TT).

Elaine Equi, Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, $18). This effervescent collection, which gathers two decades of Equi’s work with Coffee House Press as well as a handful of early poems, is one of those happy books that you can open to just about any page and find something to delight. Of her work, Equi has said, “I like the fact that for the most part, my poems are pretty accessible.” And it’s true; there’s a Rumi-esque directness to the work here, as well as a playfulness and wit, that’s wonderfully light-footed and sure (CAAF).

J.M.W. Turner (Metropolitan Museum, up through Sept. 21). The Met’s 140-piece Turner retrospective, the first full-scale look at Turner’s work ever to be mounted in America, is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion, a priceless opportunity to track the evolution of the nineteenth-century English painter whose late canvases (generously represented in this show) march right up to the very brink of abstraction. Like most blockbuster shows, this one is far too much of a muchness, but if you can stand in front of a painting like this without being thrilled to the marrow, you’re looking in the wrong direction (TT).

Peter Grimes (Decca). In 1969 Benjamin Britten conducted a fully staged studio performance of his most popular opera for the BBC, with Peter Pears singing the title role that he had created a quarter-century earlier. Now that telecast has been released on home video for the first time ever, and it’s a stunner, a handsomely staged, unexpectedly intimate production that shows us exactly how Pears interpreted the role that made him famous. Britten’s conducting is magnetically compelling, just as it is in the studio recording that he and Pears had made a decade earlier, but you will not soon forget the experience of seeing Pears as Grimes. This is one of four DVDs released as part of the new Britten-Pears Collection, and the others, including a similarly memorable 1966 film of Billy Budd, are no less essential–but Grimes is the place to start (TT).

Erin Hogan, Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American West (University of Chicago, $20). A city-dwelling, solitude-hating connoisseur of modern art hops in her compact car, drives west in search of Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” and a half-dozen other pieces of monumental land art, and finds…herself. Even if (like me) you don’t have any use for minimalism, you’ll be charmed by Hogan’s wryly self-deprecating account of her desert pilgrimage, in the course of which she learned that being alone isn’t so bad after all (TT).

Pilobolus (Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., June 30-July 26). Summer is here, meaning that Pilobolus Dance Theatre has set up shop in Chelsea for its annual month-long summer season of modern dance, gymnastics, head-twisting trompe-l’oeil effects, and (mostly) comic surrealism. Three mixed bills, one of which pairs Day Two, the company’s signature piece, with a new work designed by master puppeteer Basil Twist (TT).

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