Straight Up | Jan Herman

Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude

Of Poetry and Fakery, Cultural Theft, and Stolen Identity

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The title of Heathcote Williams’s memoir, Of Dylan Thomas and his Deaths, reflects the author’s belief that the great Welsh poet died not once but twice. He writes, “It can be said that he was to suffer no less than two deaths at American hands.” The first death, contrary to the accepted claim that he […]

Recapped: R. Crumb Epic Home Video (Un, Deux, Trois)

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This video was recorded on April 29, 2011 at the Society of Illustrators in New York City, where the exhibition ran from March 23 to April 30. Curated by Monte Beauchamp, editor of The Life and Times of R. Crumb, the show was a retrospective that presented key pieces culled from the underground art collection […]

Music Theater: ‘Street Scene for the Last Mad Soprano’

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This performance was recorded in Taos, New Mexico, in September 2014. The piece had its world premiere in Germany at Theater K-9, in Konstanz, in 1996. Abbie Conant, Soprano & Trombone / William Osborne, Music Text and Video From William Osborne’s brief description: Imagine a singer living among the dumpsters behind the Met. Tomorrow is […]

More News from Paris: Huge Bookfair Opens Today

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Offprint Paris at the Beaux-arts de Paris showcases publishers of art, photography, design, and experimental music labels. The 2014 edition features more than 130 publishers from nearly two dozen countries, an exhibition (“Disarming Design from Palestine”), and a variety of public discussions and signings. Special guests include Paul Soulellis (Library of the Printed Web), Mathieu […]

Night Out: In a Zone of His Own

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Sacha Perry at the Piano + Sept. 27, 2014 + Previously: A Virtuoso and His Guitar + And before that it was Sacha Perry doing his whiz-bang thang. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

Hard Bop: Sacha Perry in the Dwayne Clemons Quintet

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“Pianist Sacha Perry is widely known among musicians in New York as one of the brightest pianists on the scene. He studied with Barry Harris and quickly excelled in ability at the most difficult and subtle harmonies. He has been playing at Smalls for eight years, appearing with Across 7th Street, the Chris Byars Octet, […]

Words to Live By

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Bruno Monsaingeon on Sviatoslav Richter The performing musicians with whom I have a real affinity, those who seem to me the truly important ones, are those who reach beyond the instrument they happen to play, who travel within themselves and do not just rely on the parameters of the instrument in order to express music. […]

‘Clapping Music,’ Talking Music, and a ‘Mallet Quartet’

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Steve Reich has been called “our greatest living composer” by a New York Times critic. Was that hyperbole or just ink-stained enthusiasm? Listening to a performance of Reich’s “Mallet Quartet” a few nights ago at the CUNY Graduate Center (followed by his conversation with New York magazine’s music critic Justin Davidson), I understood why Reich […]

Music for Organ, With Encore for Bosendorfer Pianos

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A friend of mine, Ben Schot, sent a photo he recently took of the Brooklyn-born minimalist composer and performance artist Charlemagne Palestine (born Chaim Moshe Tzadik Palestine, or Charles Martin) and his daughter Puck, a student at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. “He used to live in Rotterdam for a couple of years […]

What Martin Luther King Jr. Said About Jazz

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Spike Wilner writes the electronic newsletter for Smalls Jazz Club, where he’s the congenial manager and one of the owners. The newsletter is always informative. Never sinks to mere PR. Which makes it one of the best around. (Wilner doesn’t just write the newsletter. He’s a first-class jazz pianist. Click the photo or this link […]

‘Aletheia,’ a Work-in-Progress

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“Aletheia” is chamber music theater work about a musician in a dressing room preparing to perform for a gala benefit for an opera house that is taking place in the courtyard below her window. Though excited at first, she can’t bring herself to go down and perform. As her sense of isolation increases, she becomes, […]

Sight Unseen, a Plug for Godfrey Reggio’s ‘Visitors’

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2002: “Naqoyqatsi,” meaning “life as war,” was the third in Reggio’s qatsi trilogy. 1988: “Powaqqatsi,” meaning “life in transformation,” was the second. 1982: “Koyaanisqatsi,” meaning “life out of balance,” was the first. Reggio’s latest, “Visitors,” with another score by Philip Glass, will be released in 2014. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

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