Terry Teachout's Blog, page 71

BIOGRAPHY

Brian Priestley, Chasin' the Bird: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker . By far the best single volume published to date about the life and work of the second most influential jazz musician of the twentieth century. Priestley succeeds in separating fact from gossip, simultaneously shedding much light on Parker's formidable artistic achievement. Concise, intelligent, and accessible to non-musicians (TT).

CD

Giant (Ghostlight, two CDs). The original-cast album of the Public Theater's 2012 production of the Michael John LaChiusa-Sybille Person stage version of Edna Ferber's novel. I praised it in The Wall Street Journal as "the most important new musical to come along since The Light in the Piazza....Giant tells an all-American tale in a way that is well suited to the present moment. It's a myth, but an honest one, enacted with high seriousness and great beauty" (TT).

CD

Jim Hall Live! Vol. 2-4 (ArtistShare, three CDs). Previously unreleased recordings made in 1975 by Jim Hall, Don Thompson, and Terry Clarke at the same Toronto gig that produced Jim Hall Live! The latter is by common consent Hall's best album--a judgment in which I concur--and this set is of identical quality, a priceless cache of wholly involving performances by the greatest living jazz guitarist (TT).

PLAY

A Picture of Autumn (Mint Theater, 311 W. 43, closes July 27). An ultra-rare American production of N.C. Hunter's poignant 1951 play about a cash-strapped aristocratic family saddled with an unaffordable country house, beautifully staged by Gus Kaikkonen and acted by a letter-perfect cast. No, you've never heard of Hunter, but trust me on this one--he's in urgent need of revival and revaluation (TT).

TT: Almanac

"A partnership with men in power is never safe."

Phaedrus, Fables

TT: Why music competitions don't work

In today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column I discuss the poor track record of big-money music competitions--and suggest an alternative. Here's an excerpt.

* * *

Boris Giltburg, an Israeli pianist who won Belgium's Queen Elisabeth Music Competition last month, has mixed feelings about his victory. "I'm a bit angry at the world for not having come up with another way of discovering talent other than competitions," he recently told a Reuters reporter, going on to say that he'd never serve on a jury for a classical-music competition.

Mr. Giltburg's comment attracted widespread attention--but it shouldn't have. The only thing surprising was that the person who said it had just snagged first-place honors in one of the world's most prestigious musical competitions. Such high-pressure events have long been regarded with suspicion by serious artists....

What would it mean for an artistic competition to "work"? Van Cliburn was catapulted to worldwide celebrity when he won Russia's International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958, and since then his victory has been cited as the quintessential example of how such events can make a crucial difference in the lives of gifted artists. But Cliburn retired from the concert stage two decades later, worn out and burned out at the unripe age of 43, and most observers put much of the blame for his disintegration on the unnatural effects of his having become becoming an overnight superstar.

Even more to the point, Cliburn is the only classical musician to whom such a thing has happened. It's been a half-century since any of the first-prize winners of the Queen Elisabeth Competition went on to have indisputably major solo careers. And Fort Worth's Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, launched in 1962 in honor of the Texas-born pianist, is notorious for picking gold medalists who fail to make it into the top tier of renown....

Mr. Giltburg's complaint set me to thinking: Given their record of near-total failure to identify artists of promise, why does anyone still bother to hold music competitions at all? It seems clear that they've become obsolete, even irrelevant--especially now that the road to success for classical musicians is no longer as well defined as it was in 1958....

* * *

Read the whole thing here .

A scene from the 1980 film The Competition, starring Lee Remick and Amy Irving:

TT: Oh, say, can you dig it?

Louis Armstrong plays "The Star-Spangled Banner" in 1960:

TT: Almanac

"If you want to discover just what there is in a man--give him power."

Francis Trevelyan Miller, Portrait Life of Lincoln

TT: So you want to see a show?

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:

• Annie (musical, G, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Matilda (musical, G, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Nance (play with music, PG-13, closes Aug. 11, reviewed here)

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

• The Trip to Bountiful (drama, G, closes Sept. 1, reviewed here)

• Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (comedy, PG-13, remounting of off-Broadway production, closes Aug. 25, nearly all performances sold out last week, original production 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)

• A Picture of Autumn (drama, G, too serious for children, closes July 27, reviewed here)

• The Weir (drama, PG-13, closes Aug. 4, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN PITTSFIELD, MASS.:

• On the Town (musical, G/PG-13, closes July 13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN WASHINGTON, D.C:

• The Real Thing (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes July 7, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• Far From Heaven (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

TT: Picture this

Childe Hassam's "Allied Flags, Union League Club," painted in 1917: