Thursday, November 10, 2016
“The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public serv…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, November 9, 2016
The Bill Evans Trio plays Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight” on Swedish TV in 1970. Eddie Gomez is the bassist, Marty Morell the drummer: (This is the latest in a series of arts-relate…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man’s mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, an…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, November 8, 2016
From 2006: The reception rooms are elegant, serene, and immaculately kept, and the windows are so thick that you can’t hear any sounds from outside. The walls are covered with paintings, m…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, November 7, 2016
Luciana Souza and I go back a long time. The first posting on this blog was about her. We’d met a year before that, in the summer of 2002. A friend told me that she’d heard a Brazilian s…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:10AMRudolf Serkin, Zubin Mehta, and the New York Philharmonic perform the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall in 1978: (This is the latest in a…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:05AM“It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.” Mark Twain, Following the Equator
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, November 4, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review two New York openings, the Public Theater transfer of Lynn Nottage’s Sweat and a Broadway revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Here�…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMMarian Anderson sings “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” accompanied by Franz Rupp and introduced by Mary Martin. This performance was originally seen on The Ford 50th Anniversar…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“One drawback, and not the least, of practicing any art is that it becomes very difficult to enjoy the works of one’s fellow artists, living or dead, simply for their own sakes. “When …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, November 3, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I discuss the controversial departure of Emma Rice, the outgoing artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe. Here’s an excerpt. * * …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM“Does a man feel prouder of what he achieves himself or of the effect he has on the achievements of posterity? Which epitaph upon a poet’s grave would please him more: ‘I wrote some of…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, November 2, 2016
Marvin Gaye sings “Got to Give It Up” on Soui Train in 1977: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Yeats, like us, was faced with the modern problem, i.e., of living in a society in which men are no longer supported by tradition without being aware of it, and in which, therefore, every…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, November 1, 2016
From 2006: I “owned” dozens of books, some of them confiscated from my parents’ shelves and others bought with my allowance. A few can still be found on the shelves of my old bedroom, …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“When two people today engage in an argument, each tends to spend half of his time and energy not in producing evidence to support his point of view but in looking for the hidden motives w…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, October 31, 2016
I was nosing around Facebook the other day when I stumbled across a reproduction of a picture postcard that bore on its face an ancient black-and-white photograph of the first church that I …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMBoris Karloff is the guest on an episode of This Is Your Life, hosted by Ralph Edwards. This episode was originally telecast by NBC on November 20, 1957: (This is the latest in a series of a…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“The difference between major and minor poetry has nothing to do with the difference between better and worse poetry. Indeed it is frequently the case that a minor poet produces more singl…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, October 28, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review two important revivals, the Public Theater’s Plenty and Lincoln Center Theater’s Falsettos. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Big news for…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMHot Tuna performs “Hesitation Blues” on Laura Webber’s Folklore Guitar, originally telecast on San Francisco’s KQED-TV in 1970. Jorma Kaukonen is the singer and guitarist, Jack Casad…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.” Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy: An Introduction …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, October 27, 2016
“The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty with a wall of erudition.” Roger Scruton, Modern Culture
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, October 26, 2016
Arthur Rubinstein plays Chopin’s B-Flat Minor Scherzo, Op. 31, in an undated telecast: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesd…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AMa href=”http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/INK-BOTTLE.jpeg”>“Yes, I am very lucky, but I have a little theory about this. I have noticed th…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, October 25, 2016
The Wall Street Journal has given me an extra column this week in which to report on the opening of the new Broadway revival of The Front Page. Here’s an excerpt from my review, which appe…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMFrom 2006: It’s quiet in Smalltown, so much so that half-audible, half-remembered sounds are constantly catching my ear: • The hollow, rattly clunk of the back door of my mother̵…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“What we have here is a story of profound instability and impermanence. This is what you learn at the beginning in show business; then it gets planted in you forever.” Steven Hill (quote…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, October 24, 2016
David Oistrakh, Heinz Fricke, and the Berlin State Opera Orchestra perform Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto on German TV in 1967: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“I have no answer to the great civic questions raised by the behavior of Furtwängler or the other artists I have named. Splendid artists all, they compromised their civic virtue in order …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM 
