Category: AJBlogs

Sir Jonathan Miller’s direction of The Mikado — his staging, dating all the way back to 1986, is now back — is the source of the treasure-hoard that has allowed English National Opera’s survival for most of my opera-going life. – Paul Levy

The alto saxophonist has long found that the nine-piece-ensemble format stimulates his creativity, and over the years, he has made several nonet albums. – Doug Ramsey

My father had no knowledge of or interest in classical music himself, but he brought home a record for me whenever he passed through Memphis on business. This is the one I remember best. – Terry Teachout

Do you ever wonder how choreographers choose their titles? After seeing James Whiteside’s New American Romance on the last day of American Ballet Theatre’s fall season at the former New York State Theater, I spent some time pondering that. – Deborah Jowitt

The aggressively transgressive new MoMA, trying to combat museum-ennui by shaking up its displays, has aimed its cannon at the canon. Its disruptive installation strategy audaciously breaches traditional geographic, temporal and art-historical boundaries, arranging shotgun marriages among strange (and strained) bedfellows and sundering longtime soulmates. – Lee Rosenbaum

Forty-nine years after the fact, I can’t remember how or why I first got interested in Miles Davis. Not that you would have needed a reason to be interested in Miles in 1970. – Terry Teachout

Dave says there are seven types of stories in the world (starting with ‘rags to riches’). Josh says there are ten types of stories in the world (starting with ‘a threshold crossing’). One of the Dannies says there are 36 types of stories in the world (starting with ‘supplication’). But what is quite clear, by the end of The Antipodes by Annie Baker at the National Theatre, is that there are just seven types of props in the world. – David Jays

This was one of the first jazz albums to be widely owned by people who didn’t usually buy jazz albums, my father among them. I found a mint-condition copy in his record cabinet that looked as if it hadn’t been played for a decade. It suited me right down to the ground. – Terry Teachout

The young Canadian drummer Harry Vetro has followed his debut album as a leader, Northern Ranger, with a shorter CD of four tracks. The new album has a similar title, Eastern Stranger, but perhaps that won’t create confusion among Vetro devotees. – Doug Ramsey

The track on this Duke Ellington LP that hit me hardest was “Sepia Panorama,” which featured Jimmy Blanton. I had only just started teaching myself how to play string badd, and Blanton was the first person ever to become a major jazz soloist on that notoriously unwieldy instrument. – Terry Teachout