TT: Pulling myself together

I’m pretty much over the travel-exacerbated cold that laid me low for the past few days. Alas, it didn’t help that I had to go all the way to Brooklyn on Tuesday and Wednesday to see the Royal Shakespeare Company perform King Lear and The Seagull at BAM Harvey Theater. Needless to say, I normally find art therapeutic, but not when it requires me to get out at night, and especially not when I have to see a three-and-a-half-hour-long Shakespeare play in Brooklyn, no matter how good the production may (or may not) be. A middle-aged critic needs his sleep, and I didn’t get enough on Tuesday.
Be that as it may, I feel somewhat like myself again, and except for a pair of same-day runouts to Baltimore and New Jersey, I don’t have any more travel planned for the next four weeks. It’s nice to be home again, especially since I have mail to open.
Just to whet your appetite, here are some of the items that arrived during my recent absences from New York that I’m looking forward to consuming at the earliest possible opportunity:
• Sky Blue, the new album from the Maria Schneider Orchestra
• Poodie James, a novel by jazzblogger Doug Ramsey
• Simone Dinnerstein’s much-ballyhooed recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations
• A.D. Nuttall’s Why Does Tragedy Give Pleasure?
• Intention, the latest CD from the Amanda Monaco 4
• Joan Mitchell: Works on Paper 1956-1992, an important new catalogue
• Louis Armstrong: Live in ’59, one of last year’s entries in the Jazz Icons DVD series
• An advance copy from Telarc of Yolanda Kondonassis’ Salzedo’s Harp: Music of Carlos Salzedo
I also have the happy but nonetheless demanding duty of selecting the perfect spot in which to hang the latest addition to the Teachout Museum, a handsome abstract serigraph by Darby Bannard called Sicilian Magician.
As usual, watch this space for details.
And now, if you’ll pardon me, I have a drama column to write….