About Last Night

Deidre Rodman, the pianist-composer about whom I’ve recently written on this blog and in the Washington Post, is appearing with her quintet on Monday at the Jazz Gallery. The gig is in celebration of the release of her second CD, Simple Stories, about which I had this to say in the Post:

If you liked the Bad Plus’ “These Are the Vistas,” an all-acoustic piano-trio album with a strong pop flavor, your next stop should be Deidre Rodman’s “Simple Stories” (Sunnyside), the second CD by an up-and-coming young pianist-composer from New York City. Rodman has put a similarly fresh spin on the time-honored trumpet-sax quintet lineup, with results as crisp and sweet as a bite out of a Fuji apple.

Like so many other twentysomething players, Rodman has performed all sorts of music. She’s worked with Elvis Costello, played in a circus band and now doubles as a member of the Lascivious Biddies, a witty girl group. Not surprisingly, her idiosyncratic approach to jazz is colored by this wide-ranging experience. For one thing, her compositions are far more than just props for aimless blowing. Some are songs (Rodman is also a talented lyricist), others large-scale compositions notable for their high melodic profiles. The influence of rock on pieces like “Sleeping Ground” (sung to perfection by Luciana Souza, who sits in on three cuts) is unmistakable, yet you don’t doubt for a moment that you’re listening to jazz….

Two sets, at nine and 10:30. For more information, go here.

While you’re at the record store, check out Acoustic Romance (Sons of Sound), a gorgeous guitar-bass-drums CD by Gene Bertoncini originally recorded in 1992 for a Japanese label and now being released stateside for the first time. Bertoncini’s gently elegant finger-style acoustic jazz guitar and classically flavored arrangements of such blue-chip standards as “The Shadow of Your Smile” and “Two for the Road” have rarely been captured in such warm yet transparent recorded sound, and Akira Tana and Rufus Reid provide impeccable support.

You can order Acoustic Romance by going here, or you can take matters into your own hands by dining at Le Madeleine, the theater-district bistro (it’s on 43rd Street just east of Ninth Avenue) where Bertoncini plays solo guitar on Sunday and Monday nights whenever he’s in New York. It happens that he’s in town for the next few weeks, so I dropped in this evening to eat the excellent food and savor the music. Both were up to par (they always are), and copies of Acoustic Romance were available for purchase and signing (ditto). Nightclubs are all very well and good, but there’s nothing like listening to great jazz while eating a good meal in pleasant surroundings, and we all know that some of New York’s most admired jazz clubs aren’t exactly, ahem, comfy.

Anyway, go see Deidre Rodman at the Jazz Gallery on Monday and Gene Bertoncini at Le Madeleine next Sunday. Buy their albums–and tell ’em I sent you.

In addition to the several miles’ worth of new postings that materialized in this spot on Friday, I’ve just installed a brand-new, all-new set of Top Fives in the right-hand column. Take a look, click on a link, enhance your life.

Much more to come on Monday and Tuesday, including the return of “In the Bag,” postings about Carolina Ballet, the Louis Armstrong House, “German Art Now” at the St. Louis Art Museum, and whatever else tickles my fancy. Stay tuned.

Seeing as how this site is officially big on the paintings, watercolors, and etchings of John Marin, I thought you might enjoy reading a very interesting newspaper story suggesting the possibility of a Marin revival:

John Marin is back in vogue.

Thanks to a new book, two new exhibitions and renewed attention stemming from the 50th anniversary of Marin’s death, interest in the American-born modernist has peaked. His popularity is borne out not only among young art students who trace his path up and down the Maine coast, but also in art auction houses, where even routine Marin paintings fetch millions of dollars these days….

Much of the new fervor is because of the recently opened retrospective “John Marin’s Maine” at the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor. The small exhibition of fewer than two dozen pieces traces Marin’s evolution as a painter from his first trip to Maine in 1914 to his death Oct. 1, 1953.

Colby College, which owns 55 Marin works and dedicates two galleries to their display, has published a long-overdue hardcover catalog of its holdings, “The John Marin Collection at the Colby College Museum of Art.”

And on Nov. 9, the Richard York Gallery in New York City will open “John Marin & Paul Strand: Friends in New England,” an exhibition that explores the dialogue between Marin and his photographer friend. It will be the first time their work has been exhibited together since 1925, when both were included in arts patron Alfred Stieglitz’s “Seven Americans” exhibition.

The only thing lacking is a major-museum retrospective, the last of which the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., mounted in 1990. Marin’s daughter-in-law, Norma Marin, hopes renewed interest will result in a thorough re-examination of the painter’s career.

“I’m obviously a little biased, but I think it’s time,” says Norma Marin, who divides her time between a Manhattan apartment and her home at Cape Split….

And where, pray tell, did this story appear? In today’s Portland Press Herald. That’s Portland, Maine, not the New York Times, thank you very much. To read the whole thing, go here. To purchase a copy of Colby College’s gorgeous Marin catalogue, go here. And to find out why you had to go to a Maine newspaper by way of an arts blog to find out about all this Marin-related activity…well, go figure.

In case you haven’t heard, Merce Cunningham, who invented postmodern choreography long before the term “postmodern” was coined, has collaborated with Radiohead and Sigur R

“About Last Night” and its proprietors have now been immortalized in verse. And yes, we’re flattered.

As for the Buffy quotes, well, I’ll take it up with OGIC once she gets her computer fixed….

Speaking of landmarks, this blog will receive its 50,000th page view some time this afternoon (probably while I’m eating lunch). Not too shabby, I’d say. And here’s something else I’d say, and will: Thanks for your support. Keep it up. Have I told you to tell a friend about www.terryteachout.com lately? Well, do.

Yeah, I know, I promised to post yesterday, but thingsgotbusyaroundhere and all of a sudden it was bedtime. No more excuses, though: I am now officially back, with a vengeance.

Part of what preoccupied me yesterday was the snail mail, which really piles up when I’m gone. Fortunately, there were plenty of accumulated goodies in the mailbox to serve as a counterpoise to all those bills and press releases. Among other things, Mosaic Records sent me a review copy of The Complete Verve Gerry Mulligan Concert Band Sessions, a box set for which jazz buffs have been waiting impatiently ever since word of its imminent release circulated last year. More later, but believe me, you don’t need to wait for the reviews, from me or anyone else, to buy this one.

I also received a treasure from San Francisco, Milton Avery’s March at a Table, a drypoint etching that I ordered from a dealer months ago but couldn’t afford to finish paying for until I received the first installment of the advance for my Louis Armstrong and George Balanchine biographies. It’s really, really beautiful, and it’s also an anomaly: I don’t own any other works of figurative art. All my other pieces are unpeopled landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes, and abstracts. No doubt this says something profound and unintentionally revealing about the nature of my interior life (especially since this “portrait” of the artist’s daughter is far from literally representational), but all I know is that I hung “March at a Table” on the wall at the end of my couch, where I can see it easily whenever I’m curled up with a book.

Lastly and leastly–except to me–HarperCollins sent a first-off-the-press copy of the trade paperback edition of The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken, which comes out on November 4 (you can pre-order it from amazon.com by clicking on the link). It, too, is beautiful, at least as far as I’m concerned. It’s also the perfect antidote for those blue periods when you feel like nothing will ever go right again, because in addition to the front- and back-cover blurbs from the Atlantic, the Boston Globe, The Economist, the Baltimore Sun, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, the folks at HarperCollins threw in four solid pages of enthusiastic excerpts from thirty other reviews of The Skeptic. Is that cool, or what?

So yes, I’ve got a lot of stuff to do (don’t I always?), and sometimes I wish I didn’t, but when you get right down to it, who has a better job? Which is why I’m glad to be blogging again: I love to share my pleasures with you, at least vicariously. Thanks for stopping by while I was gone, and thanks for being so nice to Our Girl in Chicago.

(Incidentally, I just heard from OGIC, who is having computer troubles of her own. Please send benign thoughts her way–I sooooooo know how it is.)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a gallery to visit, and a review to write, and a whole lot of accumulated e-mail to start answering….

I reviewed The Boy from Oz in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. It’s a new musical in which Hugh Jackman plays pop singer-songwriter Peter Allen. Here’s an excerpt:

Mr. Jackman, an energetic and engaging movie-star-in-the-making whom my friends assure me is babealicious, plays the piano-pounding Australian songster who was discovered by Judy, married Liza, came out of the closet (not that the news of his homosexuality surprised anyone, least of all his wife), enjoyed a momentary vogue as a sort of disco-era Liberace, wrote and starred in “Legs Diamond” (it crashed and burned after 64 performances), and died of AIDS in 1992 at the age of 48, his 15 minutes of fame having long since run out.

All this adds up to a potentially interesting tale, and the story of the Allen-Minnelli marriage in particular is the stuff of which a terrific backstage musical might well have been made. But Martin Sherman, who wrote the book for “The Boy from Oz,” has settled instead for the theatrical equivalent of a cheesy TV movie, turning every character into a stick figure and every plot twist into a four-panel comic strip. I’ve seen some silly things on Broadway, but my Schlock-O-Meter nearly exploded when Allen’s dead lover (Jarrod Emick) returned as a ghost to sing “I Honestly Love You” to his grieving companion. Eeuuww!…

No link–it’s the Journal–so if you want to read the rest, and also find out what I thought of William Gibson’s Golda’s Balcony, proceed directly to the nearest newstand, divest yourself of a dollar and turn to the “Weekend Journal” section, which is where I hang out every Friday. You’ll find lots of good stuff there.

I’m writing an essay about a new biography of Paul Whiteman, the celebrated bandleader of the Twenties who premiered Rhapsody in Blue. In preparation, and also just for fun, I recently reread A Pocketful of Dreams, the first volume of Gary Giddins’ excellent biography of Bing Crosby, who got his start singing with the Whiteman band (I really do wish Giddins would get around to finishing that second volume, by the way).

What caught my eye this time around was the chapter about Kraft Music Hall, Crosby’s radio series, one of the most popular shows of the Thirties and Forties. In addition to his own singing and the usual comedy, Crosby consistently booked classical performers. A Pocketful of Dreams lists a few of the now-legendary artists who appeared as guests on KMH, and the roster is illuminating. They include Harold Bauer, Feodor Chaliapin, Emanuel Feuermann, Percy Grainger, Bronislaw Hubermann, Lotte Lehmann, Mischa Levitzki, Gregor Piatigorsky, Ruggiero Ricci, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Andr