Category: AJBlogs

On a hilltop miles away from the city I love, I’ve decided to look at Paul Taylor & Company — An Artist and his Work, a 1968 film directed by Ted Steeg. 1968! My choice was partly personal … – Deborah Jowitt

To help artists who, because of the coronavirus havoc, are finding it ever harder to stay afloat, the painter Makoto Fujimura and his International Arts Movement have launched the Hilary Teachout Grant (named after my beloved wife), an emergency relief grant for performing and other artists. – Terry Teachout

Using aspects of phrasing, rhythm and tonal quality adapted from the great Lester Young, Konitz in the 1940s developed into one of the most distinctive saxophonists in jazz. – Doug Ramsey

Even with so many Beethoven 250th-birthday concerts being cancelled, the world needs to hear pieces of his that haven’t already been played a zillion times. This one is solid, perfectly engaging — and performed by musicians that are among the best out there, even if we’ve barely (yet) heard of them. – David Patrick Stearns

In order to divert those of you who, like me, are staying home these days, I’ve been posting images from what a friend calls “the Teachout Museum.” The latest is of a 1990 lithograph by Joan Mitchell, an artist for whom my feelings have grown progressively stronger. – Terry Teachout

For his recent collection Common Practice, pianist and composer Ethan Iverson has put together a quartet with bassist Ben Street, drummer Eric McPherson, and trupmeter Tom Harrell at a peak of imagination and inventiveness remarkable even by his high standards. – Doug Ramsey

If you’ve already seen the Max-&-Dan video that the Met posted today to mark this unexpectedly somber occasion, you may have wondered about the identity of the head peering over Director Max Hollein‘s left shoulder. – Lee Rosenbaum

I’ve been skimming through a complete collection of Chekhov’s stories. There’s lotsa chaff — small anecdotes published in newspapers from early days that don’t do much and weren’t intended for the ages. But then you come upon “an unpleasantness,” a long story from a later period that stands up like an erection. – Jan Herman

Hundreds of performances of Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 (“Death and the Maiden”) have come my way over the decades, but none seized me from the very first notes like the new recording by the vision string quartet, titled Memento, recently issued on Erato. – David Patrick Stearns

The death of this funny, smart, idiosyncratic, unique music producer at age 64 saddens me. We were East Village neighbors in the go-go ’90s, flush with ideas to try in the future. Here’s my entry about him from Future Jazz. – Howard Mandel