Terry Teachout's Blog, page 115

TT: Almanac

"It's one thing to develop a nostalgia for home while you're boozing with Yankee writers in Martha's Vineyard or being chased by the bulls in Pamplona. It's something else to go home and visit with the folks in Reed's drugstore on the square and actually listen to them. The reason you can't go home again is not because the down-home folks are mad at you--they're not, don't flatter yourself, they couldn't care less--but because once you're in orbit and you return to Reed's drugstore on the square, you can stand no more than fifteen minutes of the conversation before you head for the woods, head for the liquor store, or head back to Martha's Vineyard, where at least you can put a tolerable and saving distance between you and home. Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon."

Walker Percy, Lost In The Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (courtesy of Rod Dreher)

TT: Dave Brubeck, R.I.P.

Dave Brubeck, a wonderful artist and an uncommonly kind and decent man, died today, on the eve of his ninety-second birthday. The Los Angeles Times obituary is here .

Much will be said about Brubeck in days to come, so I'll confine myself to a purely personal note: I learned how to play jazz bass as a boy by plucking along with my father's battered copy of Jazz Goes to College , the 1954 live album that made Brubeck a star. It's as listenable today as it was six decades ago. So are most of his other records, this one in particular.

Here's a rare kinescope of the Dave Brubeck Quartet performing "The Duke," a tribute to Duke Ellington that was Brubeck's best-known composition. Paul Desmond is the saxophonist, Bob Bates the bassist, Joe Dodge the drummer:



And here's my all-time favorite Brubeck record, a performance of his own "Summer Song" in which he accompanies none other than Louis Armstrong. Iola, Dave's wife, wrote the lyric:

TT: Snapshot

Clifford Brown performs "Oh, Lady Be Good" and "Memories of You" in 1955 on Soupy Sales' Soup's On. This clip is believed to be the only surviving performance film of Brown:



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

TT: Almanac

"Perhaps a creature of so much ingenuity and deep memory is almost bound to grow alienated from his world, his fellows, and the objects around him. He suffers from a nostalgia for which there is no remedy upon earth except as it is to be found in the enlightenment of the spirit--some ability to have a perceptive rather than an exploitive relationship with his fellow creatures."

Loren Eiseley, The Invisible Pyramid

PLAY

Our Town (Huntington Theatre Company, Calderwood Pavilion, 527 Tremont St., Boston, closes Jan. 13). David Cromer's staging of Thornton Wilder's masterpiece, which ran off Broadway for more than 600 performance, is now being remounted in Boston. It's the greatest revival of a classic play that I've seen in my entire theatergoing life, a re-creative landmark that at once arrestingly original and fundamentally faithful in its approach to the author's well-loved text. Don't listen if anybody tries to tell you about the surprise ending--and once you've seen the show, don't tell anybody what happens (TT).

CD

Donald Fagen, Sunken Condos (Reprise). A new solo album from the co-founder of Steely Dan, Sunken Condos is very much in the now-familiar vein of Morph the Cat , its immediate predecessor. That is, however, a compliment, not a knock. Sly lyrics, subtle harmonies, richly textured rock/jazz/R&B instrumental tracks, virtuoso playing from all parties concerned--what more could you possibly want? This is rock for grownups, wholly adult in its musical language and emotional concerns (TT).

MUSEUM

Matisse: In Search of True Painting (Metropolitan Museum, up through Mar. 17). Forty-nine canvases, subtly arranged to highlight and illuminate the way in which the modern master developed his imaginative ideas from work to work. A richly rewarding show of the highest importance (TT).

TT: Fill the air

Six years ago I posted a list of my favorite Christmas records. I still like all of them, and so, I hope, will you.

TT: Lookback

From 2005:

I recently saw a stage actress I know in an episode of a popular TV series. This was a new experience for me. I've watched any number of writer friends hold forth on talk shows, and I've even tuned into David Letterman to see a band whose members I know quite well. But all those people were being themselves, more or less, whereas my actress friend was pretending to be someone else. Of course she was in one sense wholly herself (I knew her smile in an instant/I knew the curve of her face), and the part she played drew deeply on her familiar energy. Nor was she made up in any deceptive way: she looked like the person I know. Yet some uncanny transformation had nonetheless taken place, and I found myself to be more than a little bit disoriented as I watched her on the screen....

Read the whole thing here .

TT: Almanac

"When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go. That is what I saw. It wasn't really you, what you were doing, I know that. But I saw you and it broke my heart. And I've never forgotten."

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go