Archives for April 2012

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has just announced that I am being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2012 to support the completion of my next book, Mood Indigo: A Life of Duke Ellington.

In case you’re not familiar with the Guggenheim Fellowships, here’s a brief history of the program, drawn from the foundation’s website:

Established in 1925 by former United States Senator and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim, in memory of seventeen-year-old John Simon Guggenheim, the elder of their two sons, who died April 26, 1922, the Foundation has sought from its inception to “add to the educational, literary, artistic, and scientific power of this country, and also to provide for the cause of better international understanding,” as the Senator explained….

The Fellowships are awarded to men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts. The Foundation consults with distinguished scholars and artists regarding the accomplishments and promise of the applicants and presents this evidence to the Committee of Selection.

This will be, so far as I know, the first time that the Guggenheim Foundation has supported the writing of a full-length biography of a jazz musician. (One previous recipient of a fellowship started work on such a biography, but it was never completed.)

Between three and four thousand people apply for Guggenheims each year, and roughly two hundred of them are chosen. Aaron Copland was a member of the first “class” of fellows in 1925, followed by (among many, many others) W.H. Auden, Jacques Barzun, Romare Bearden, Saul Bellow, Harold Clurman, Arlene Croce, Merce Cunningham, Stuart Davis, Edwin Denby, Leon Edel, Walker Evans, Martha Graham, Marsden Hartley, Nat Hentoff, David Ives, Randall Jarrell, Keith Jarrett, Alex Katz, Pauline Kael, Jacob Lawrence, Alan Lomax, Marianne Moore, Errol Morris, Mark Morris, Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Puryear, Charles Rosen, Ned Rorem, Andrew Sarris, Virgil Thomson, Lionel Trilling, John Updike, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wilbur, Alec Wilder, August Wilson, and Edmund Wilson.

More recently, fellowships have been awarded to Hilton Als, Patricia Barber, Paul Berman, Eric Bogosian, Don Byron, Ethan Canin, Brad Gooch, Philip Gourevitch, Molly Haskell, Jake Heggie, Fred Hersch, Manuela Hoelterhoff, Joseph Horowitz, Pico Iyer, Margo Jefferson, Moisés Kaufman, Mark Lilla, Thomas Mallon, Lynn Nottage, Jed Perl, John Richardson, Kay Ryan, Justin Spring, Basil Twist, Amanda Vaill, Randy Weston, Leon Wieseltier, and–just last year–my friend Richard Brookhiser.

I am deeply honored today.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:

• Anything Goes (musical, G/PG-13, mildly adult subject matter that will be unintelligible to children, closes Sept. 9, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Best Man (drama, PG-13, closes July 1, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Death of a Salesman (drama, PG-13, unsuitable for children, all performances sold out last week, closes June 2, reviewed here)

• Evita (musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Godspell (musical, G, suitable for children, reviewed here)

• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren’t actively prudish, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Other Desert Cities (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes June 17, reviewed here)

• Venus in Fur (serious comedy, R, adult subject matter, closes June 17, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, off-Broadway remounting of Broadway production, original run reviewed here)

• Tribes (drama, PG-13, closes Sept. 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING THIS WEEKEND OFF BROADWAY:

• Beyond the Horizon (drama, PG-13, closes Sunday, reviewed here)

• The Lady from Dubuque (drama, PG-13, closes Sunday, reviewed here)

• Lost in Yonkers (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Saturday, reviewed here)

“Why, sir, a man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.”
Samuel Johnson (quoted in James Boswell, Life of Johnson)

An extremely rare color kinescope of an excerpt from Ernie Kovacs’ Silent Show, originally telecast on NBC in 1957:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

“Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.”
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

From 2004:

Reformers, like saints, can be awfully awkward people. Their singlemindedness is no small part of what makes them effective, as well as uncomfortable to be with. I’ve known a few, but I’ve never tried to get close to them. No matter how friendly they may seem, I always get the feeling that they’d be perfectly happy to have me guillotined if they thought it necessary….

Read the whole thing here.