Archives for September 2003

“In cities men cannot be prevented from concerting together and awakening a mutual excitement that prompts sudden and passionate resolutions.”

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

The weekend was eventful–Washington and Baltimore in quick succession–but New York beckoned, so I returned. How could I leave you hanging? Here are today’s topics, from quick to dirty: (1) How to spend your jazz-related entertainment dollar this week in New York. (2) Turn your radio on and I’ll croon for you. (3) “In the Bag.” (4) A pair of revealing vignettes. (5) The latest almanac entry.

My ratings fell off a bit last Friday, after a very encouraging week. Did all of you take one last long weekend before the fall season gets going in earnest? If so, did you remember to exhort your friends, colleagues, lovers, and enemies to read www.terryteachout.com regularly–before leaving town? (Long, awkward silence.)

I suspected as much. All is forgiven–but get with the program.

Two jazz gigs worth hearing:

The Bad Plus is appearing Tuesday through Sunday at the Village Vanguard. Here’s what I wrote in the Washington Post earlier this year about their debut CD, These Are the Vistas:

The Bad Plus is a piano trio, one of jazz’s most familiar lineups–only Ethan Iverson, Reid Anderson and David King don’t sound anything like Ahmad Jamal or Oscar Peterson. Instead of the usual show tunes and jazz standards, they play “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Heart of Glass,” and weirdly tilted original compositions with titles like “Silence Is the Question” and “Keep the Bugs Off Your Glass and the Bears Off Your Ass.” Their producer is Tchad Blake, whose credits include albums by Elvis Costello, Suzanne Vega and Pearl Jam. And “These Are the Vistas” (Columbia), their major-label debut, isn’t just a breath of fresh air–it’s a tornado….

The Bad Plus doesn’t do cutesy watered-down covers of hit singles. Instead, they deconstruct the songs of Blondie, Nirvana and Aphex Twin with the same rigorous conceptual clarity that goes into their own originals, and their group sound–blunt, clear-cut, full of splintery dissonances and jolting musical jokes–blends jazz, rock and classical music so indissolubly as to make the differences between the three musics seem trivial.

Alto saxophonist Bud Shank is appearing on Wednesday and Thursday at the Jazz Standard. If you don’t recognize the name, Shank is one of the indisputable giants of West Coast jazz. Prominently featured on dozens of classic Contemporary and Pacific Jazz albums of the Fifties, he’s still alive, well, and by all accounts playing his ass off. As if that alone weren’t recommendation enough, he’ll be backed by a world-class rhythm section anchored by pianist Bill Mays, who was staggeringly adventurous last week at Marvin Stamm’s Birdland gig.

I can’t remember the last time Shank played a New York nightclub gig–in fact, I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never heard him live–and I don’t plan to pass up this rare opportunity to find out what he’s sounding like these days. You come, too.

I’ll be appearing Tuesday on National Public Radio’s Performance Today to talk about the opening of Zankel Hall, as part of a broadcast from the new hall of a concert by Emanuel Ax and the Emerson String Quartet.

Performance Today airs at different times in different cities. To find out more about the show, including where and when to tune in, go here.

Time again for “In the Bag,” the game that challenges you to put aside pride and admit what art you really like. The rules: you can put any five works of art into your bag before departing for a desert island, but you have to choose right now. No stalling or dithering–the armies of the night are pounding on your front door. No posturing–you have to say the first five things that pop into your head, no matter how uncool they may sound. What do you stuff in the bag?

Here are my picks, as of this second:

PAINTING: Arthur Dove, Rain or Snow (scroll down to see it)

MUSIC: Maurice Ravel, Piano Concerto in G (slow movement, performed by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli)

NOVEL: James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson

FILM: Roman Polanski, Chinatown

POP SONG: Lucinda Williams, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

Your turn.

(1) I ordered a copy of this Alex Katz lithograph from a London print dealer three weeks ago. It hadn’t reached me as of last Thursday, so I sent the dealer an e-mail asking if anything was wrong. He wrote back to say that he’d been having quite a bit of trouble of late with slow deliveries to the United States, adding that the reason must be that the U.S. Postal Service had been “Bushed.”

(2) When I arrived at Washington’s Union Station on Friday, I jumped in a cab and asked the driver to take me to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. He looked puzzled, asked me if I knew where it was, scratched his head, then had an epiphany. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I believe I do know that one, but nobody ever wants to go there–I take somebody there maybe once a year.”

“During a technically very complicated recording at Goldwyn Studios, one of the playback machines broke down time and time again, causing endless delays. Finally I succumbed to the luxury of pointless anger.

I’m out of here for a couple of days. Tonight I’ll be seeing the premiere of Ken Ludwig’s Shakespeare in Hollywood at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. (I’m reviewing it for next Friday’s Wall Street Journal), and on Saturday afternoon I’ll be giving the annual Mencken Day lecture at Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library. Stop by if you’re in town–the Mencken Room, where Mencken’s private papers are stored, is open to the public from 10 to 5. I’ll be speaking at three o’clock and signing copies of The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken afterward.

Needless to say, none of this will interfere with the clock-like regularity with which “About Last Night” is published–24/5 as per always, unless I’m in Maine or jail. I’ll be here on Monday, and I’m here now with today’s topics, from functional to frivolous: (1) Of concert halls, museums, and fancy houses. (2) Is blog smog choking the Web? (3) A going-away party for a jazz giant. (4) The latest almanac entry.

Yesterday’s posting about Zankel Hall was picked up by my host, artsjournal.com, thus bringing me a heap of new visitors. (Hi, y’all.) Allow me to return the compliment. Click on the artsjournal.com logo at the top of this page and you will be magically transported to one of the best sites on the Web, a daily digest of news stories and commentary on the arts from throughout the English-speaking world (not to mention the host for a half-dozen wide-ranging arts blogs, of which “About Last Night” is but one). I look at artsjournal.com every morning. So should you.

Not to belabor the obvious…so I won’t. Have a nice weekend. Come back Monday–and bring a friend. (Whoops, I did it again!)